Mittelbauerische Zeitung

For « Harmony in the World »

The French artist Christian Havet at the « Galerie Noma »

By Beate Lutz-Mass

Regensburg. He is an artist and a healer – and the two are simply inseparable. French-born Christian Havet, who has lived near Landshut for several years, is currently exhibiting at the « Galerie Noma » on Weissgerbergraben: paintings and collages that explore the dimensions of being, the flow of energies, balance and harmony, health, light, and love.

For Christian Havet, art is closer to health than to aesthetics: « I am deeply convinced that art possesses a concrete energetic power and that it can have a strong influence on harmony in the world, » Havet explains the impetus behind all his works – art as an « existential and spiritual survival strategy » in a « sick world. » Here, Havet sees his task both as an artist and as a modern shaman: with the premise that everything is vibration, to generate life-affirming, vital frequencies that restore inner order in the individual, who, however, can never be seen in isolation, just as in society, the inextricable network of individuals. Always seeing the whole in the individual, the supra-individual connection, is Havet’s perspective. The architect with a doctorate (« that’s over, it doesn’t interest me anymore »), who sees his artistic work influenced by Joseph Beuys while still forging his own unique path, refuses to commit to a particular style, nor to a preferred tool. He doesn’t shy away from assembling « very simple things » in a way that creates beauty. « I reduce my collages to their simple elements to remove the enigma of the abstract, » explains Havet.

Glued-on rose thorns reveal the silhouette of a person—aggression, pain that comes from outside, while still providing an opportunity to learn from it, says Havet. One should reflect a little, knowledge is never cheap. There are the winged maple seeds—a symbol of our lives; everything is cyclical, everything is transient, and yet something new is constantly emerging. And again and again, mankind appears, sometimes described as a part of nature with tree names, in green, the color of healing, sometimes as the starting point of many lines expressing the vulnerability of the individual, then again as the center of the diverse energy fields around him.

For the Noma Gallery, this is the last exhibition for the time being, a farewell to the past two years in which a wide variety of artists were given the opportunity to exhibit their works. Ten percent of the sales proceeds each year went to Noma Aid. The owner of the space, Ilse Arnauld des Lions, has to close the gallery for health reasons. And perhaps an exhibition will still take place every now and then…

Christian Havet, Noma Gallery, Weissengerbergraben, until January 31, Monday to Friday from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m.