“Trauma”: the book

“Trauma” is a 176-page half-linen hardcover book, published on the occasion of my first institutional solo show — at Museum Angerlehner in 2021.

The book includes over sixty images, as well as texts in German and English by Andrea Kopranovic, Jaqueline Scheiber (“minusgold“) and Günther Oberhollenzer. It covers works created since 2006, and also features beautiful exhibition views (by Simon Veres) as well as a portrait photo (by Milena Nowak).

The book has been designed by Mischa Guttmann, who is both a graphics designer and a sculptor; as a result, Mischa “makes objects, not just books”. In this case, a black-in-black hardcover is the base for a gravure-like hot-foil stamping, which embraces the actual book’s contents.

That content is diverse: my art is connected to lyrical fragments, and discussed in three texts. Where the exhibition lets you physically experience many of my works (whether large-scale paintings or more sensual drawings), the book adds additional layers of meaning — and can travel directly into your hands.

“Christian Bazant-Hegemark: Trauma” is published by “Verlag Bibliothek der Provinz“, and costs €30. ISBN 9-783991-260202

You can order it here.

“Die Kentaurin von Kagran”: the book

Die Kentaurin von Kagran is a book that combines the poetry of Brigitte Menne with my black and white drawings — in visually striking style, envisioned and realized by Mischa Guttmann (who is both sculptor and graphic designer). The book consists of 192 pages and was published by fabrik.transit.

Brigitte’s poetry is published the first time, and covers a nearly twenty-year range. Contact me if you want to buy a copy (€18).

Gegenwart der Malerei: Dissertation by Christian Bazant-Hegemark

I graduated in 2011, and decided to write a PhD thesis about narratology in painting. I got a government grant that would enable me to focus on this sort of research, and ran with it.

Within a year I realized that I was unable to focus on any specific topic (narratology) within any specific media (painting) before laying down a sort of framework to understand the ontology of that medium: what eventually was published in 2015 was this framework: an ontology of painting. It covers questions like

  • What is painting today?
  • How to define art?
  • How to then define painting?
  • How is painting influenced by digital media?
  • What even is digital media — what are its attributes?
  • What is the essence of digitalism, and how does it connect to (analog) painting?
  • Can painting be argued to be exclusively analog?

This got to be a deep inquiry in the medium that I’d by then used for a decade.