* All images used with permission. Please do not distribute without first contacting the artist.
Christoph Eberle was born in 1969 in Zürich, Switzerland. He graduated in 1996 as an architect with a diploma from ETH Zürich. As a self-taught hyperrealistic painter his influences include old masters such as Caravaggio, Vermeer van Delft, Jacques Louis David, Caspar David Friedrich and Segantini. His inspirations are born from snapshots of everyday life – be it in the laundry room or on the way in to town: These moments, when for an instant the light and the situation are coherent, producing a brief moment of clarity and perfection – a type of film still from his personal movie – are what he searches to capture as precisely as possible. Painting with very fine and concise brushstrokes he is examining/exploring the classic image concepts (landscape, still life and portrait). Although photos are used as a starting point in the painting process, the intention is not to fool the eye but to create images that are coherent and self-contained, allowing space for interpretation. So the goal is to achieve a strong and independent visual idea, not a slavish copy.
Christoph explains the work by saying, “Having grown up in Switzerland, I cherish one of the scarcest goods in this country: sunshine. Light and heat are for many months in short supply. Therefore light has become an important element in my paintings. The way the light pours over objects, as it defines the object as a body, what area it emphasizes and what disappears in the shadows are common themes throughout my works. In particular the shadows that live, softly vibrating in the dimmed light and give the picture composition grip and provide the motives with volume”.
