Christophe Constantin was born in Montreux (Switzerland) in 1987. After obtaining a Bachelor of arts at EDHEA in 2013, he moved to Rome, where he specialised in Sculpture in 2016, at RUFA. That same year, he spent 2 months in Barcelona, at the Espronceda artist residency, where he developed the project “Spending time in Barcelona”, which would result in two solo exhibitions; the first in Barcelona with an eponymous title and the second in Rome, entitled “Check in” at Pastificio Cerere. During the last few years, his work has been presented in multiple exhibition spaces, in solo and group exhibitions, both in Italy and in France, Switzerland and Germany. By overflowing the banality of everyday life, his practice seeks to shift and destroy any norm and rule, with the aim of representing contemporary reality and the remnants of an infantile romanticism, while always maintaining a touch of humour and sarcasm regarding the status of art and the artist.
Lo schermo di Narciso
The student focused his analysis on the concept of Pop-Romanticism, presented as a new phenomenology of contemporary art. His arrival in Rome profoundly broadened Christophe’s perspective, and his sensitivity was strongly affected by the fascinating decadence of the Capital. Pop-Romanticism is thus defined as the movement in which the figure of the artist becomes an integral part of the work: the artist is not to be defined as such only by what they create, but also by the attitude they possess. This idea had already been explored in depth by Harald Szeeman in the 1968 exhibition “Quando gli atteggiamenti diventano forma”, presented again at the Venice Biennale in 2013; such a gesture once again reflects the way contemporary art reappropriates myths, creating a journey into the past, just as Romantic painters did with the Grand Tour.
Such a gesture once again reflects the way contemporary art reappropriates myths, creating a journey into the past, just as Romantic painters did with the Grand Tour.
