CANISCOPE

Prequel to the book Dogs, published in September 2023, this set of 56 shapes was drawn by Jochen Gerner in two-tone KOH-I-NOOR colored pencil (blue and red), on old bar stub books, in a furtive gesture of note-taking and graphic experimentation, from May 2021 to February 2022. In leaving aside the pigmented Indian ink markers in favor of a line clear and refined, enhanced by the famous two-tone television pencils, Caniscope examines the canine question in a radically different style. Silhouettes ghosts decorated with two round eyes, crawling profiles held on a leash, heads hairy and punctuated with a truffle, these abstract modules resemble dogs elliptical whose analysis would have focused solely on the texture of the coat. The densely juxtaposed, parallel or intersecting lines, when drawn wavy, quivering or straight, build a catalog of fluffy materials. Here is a canine mugshot where we find the midnight blue Affenpinscher, the Wavy Saint Hubert, the Sponge Bulldog or even the Moustachioed Chow-chow, these real and fanciful races that have made the author's trademark of Birds and Dogs. These fuzzy and endearing dogs respond to delicate names of Hovercraft, Vol-au-vent, Puli pull-over or Conditioner. surnames born from the lineaments and the very nature of their coat to recall this physical characteristic which makes these animals specific.