Caniscope

Caniscope is a collection of 45 portraits of dogs drawn by Jochen Gerner in two-tone KOH-I-NOOR colored pencil (blue and red), on old bar stub notebooks, in a furtive gesture of note-taking and graphic experimentation, from May 2021 to February 2022. Ghostly silhouettes adorned with two round eyes, creeping profiles held on a leash, hairy heads punctuated by a nose, these abstract modules resemble elliptical dogs whose analysis would have focused solely on the texture of the coat. The densely juxtaposed, parallel or intersecting lines, with wavy, trembling or straight lines, construct a catalogue of fluffy materials. Here is a canine mugshot featuring the midnight blue Affenpinscher, the wavy Saint Hubert, the sponge-coated Bulldog and the mustachioed Chow-chow, these real and fanciful breeds which have become the trademark of the author of Birds and Dogs. These fuzzy and endearing dogs have the delicate names of Hovercraft, Vol-au-vent, Puli pull-over or Conditioner. Surnames born from the features and the very nature of their coat to recall this physical characteristic which makes these animals specific.