DENIS CHRISTOPHEL French, b. 1988
Denis Christophel was born in Yvelines in 1988 and lives and works in the Paris region.
In 2012, Denis Christophel was featured in the 57th Salon de Montrouge. In 2013, he graduated from the Ecole supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. For Alexandre Crochet, "Denis Christophel is one of those who still firmly believe that painting has something to say. Christophel strives to avoid anecdotes and leave as much room as possible for the viewer's imagination, developing an extremely simplified space, the ‘original,’ as he calls it.
Underneath a lush work of drops and scratches, whose palette is reduced to the essentials, he allows confused masses of clouds, retinal memories, or island spirits to emerge, suggested by a few lines.
The Galerie Guillaume showed his work at the “Place aux jeunes” exhibition in February 2014, where he was a great success. Since then, it has represented him with several solo exhibitions, the last of which took place in September 2019. The Meudon Center for Art and Culture showed his work in 2018. The city of Meudon purchased a canvas by Denis Christophel in 2018 to complete the contemporary section of the museum's collection on the French landscape.
Inspired by the tradition of landscape painting and its echoes in abstract art, my work is primarily concerned with time: the time spent contemplating, where the gaze draws on the textures, lights, and colors that surround it; the time spent in the studio, an enclosed and autonomous space where the ritual of painting gently shapes the canvases; and finally, the time needed for the viewer to allow themselves to be touched by the paintings and to “inhabit” them.
In the quiet of the studio, a hermitage where my impressions settle and then transform, I patiently superimpose very fine glazes, which I polish and modulate through plays of transparency, erasures, or scrapings: then, at the heart of the canvas, a silent horizon opens up, a gap conducive to daydreams and reminiscences where light always lies.
Rather than being the result of a program dictated by conscious reflection, my paintings are inseparable from my temperament; they echo it and should be for the viewer “a cerebral sedative, something analogous to a good armchair that relieves him of his physical fatigue” (Matisse). Uninfluenced by any impulse, their creation is subject to the search for a peaceful modus vivendi with the world, which must be reflected in the balance and horizontality of the final composition.
2025
Group exhibition, Espace Points de Vue, Lauzerte
2024
“Les oiseaux ne volent que la nuit” (Birds Only Fly at Night), group exhibition, Conscious Paris
“20 ans déjà” (20 Years Already), group exhibition, Galerie Guillaume, Paris
2022
“Levare,” group exhibition, Villa Balissades, Beaussais-sur-Mer
“Carte blanche au 6b” (Carte Blanche at 6b), group exhibition, Le 19M, Paris
“Circumstantial Landscapes,” group exhibition, Villa Balissades, Beaussais-sur-Mer
2021
Solo exhibition, Espace Daniel Sorano, Vincennes
2019
“Tinted with Azure, Glazed with Pink, Lamé with Gold,” solo exhibition, Galerie Guillaume, Paris
2018
“Peintures” (Paintings), solo exhibition, Centre d'art et de culture, Meudon
2016
“Intérieur” (Interior), solo exhibition, Galerie Guillaume, Paris
2015
“Inconnaissance [Terres]” (Unknowing [Earths]), le 6B, group exhibition, Saint-Denis
“Tiantian Xu / Denis Christophel – Au fil du temps,” group exhibition, Galerie Guillaume, Paris
2014
“Inconnaissance [Informa],” group exhibition, le 6B, Saint-Denis
“Peintures,” solo exhibition, Galerie du Crous de Paris
“Place aux jeunes,” group exhibition, Galerie Guillaume, Paris
Prix Icart-artistik rezo, exhibition of selected artists, Espace Pierre Cardin, Paris
2012
Participation in the 57th Salon de Montrouge
Education
2013
National Higher Diploma in Fine Arts, École nationale supérieure des Beaux-arts de Paris
2012
Facultad de Artes, Universidad de Chile, Santiago
2010
National Diploma in Fine Arts, École nationale supérieure des Beaux-arts de Lyon
https://www.connaissancedesarts.com/arts-expositions/la-nature-enchantee-de-denis-christophel-11124898/
http://www.visuelimage.com/hebdo/index.php?ad=10&id_news=8340
http://www.lefigaro.fr/sortir-paris/2014/02/11/30004-20140211ARTFIG00004-les-nouvelles-tetes-qui-font-paris.php