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Caniscope is a collection of 45 portraits of dogs drawn by Jochen Gerner with KOH-INOOR bicolour pencils (blue and red), on old bar notebooks, in a furtive gesture of note-taking and graphic experimentation, from May 2021 to February 2022. Leaving aside felt-tip pens with pigmented Indian ink in favour of a clear, uncluttered line, sublimated by the famous two-tone television pencils, Caniscope examines the canine question in a radically different style: ghostly silhouettes adorned with two round eyes, creeping profiles held on a leash, hairy heads punctuated by a nose…
The densely juxtaposed, parallel or criss-crossing strokes, with their wavy, trembling or straight lines, build up a catalogue of fluffy materials, creating a canine trombinoscope that includes the midnight-blue Affenpinscher, the wavy Saint-Hubert, the sponge bulldog and the Chow-chowmoustachu, the real and fanciful breeds that are the trademark of the author of Oiseaux et Chiens. These dogs go by the delicate names of Aéroglisseur, Vol-au-vent, Puli pull-over or Après-shampoo. These names are born from the lineaments and very nature of their coats, to recall the physical characteristics that make these animals so special.