Iridescence, Chroma, Vibration…all pulsating with color, Diane Benoit du Rey's canvases hypnotize us. It was, in fact, under the title "Hypnosis" that her large painted fabrics and her… were displayed last autumn. Sandblasted disc under the dome of the Espace Richaud in Versailles.
Consisting of 50 meters of painted tapestries suspended between the coffered dome and the colonnade of the rotunda in the Versailles space and a large Colored disc Composed of 400 kg of pigmented sand, this site-specific installation invited visitors to a truly pictorial experience. A real immersion in painting and color gradations. An admirable display of color in space, this masterpiece was the culmination of abstract work exploring light, begun several years prior.
Born in Versailles in 1989 and trained at the École supérieure des arts décoratifs in Strasbourg, Diane Benoit du Rey's vocation as a minimalist painter arose from observing how light reveals things (spaces and people). Far removed from the general resurgence of interest in figurative painting and the vogue for hyperrealism, she has dedicated herself for years to representing the phenomenon of light through a fascinating "chromatic exploration."
Like Mark Rothko (currently exhibited in all its glory at the Louis Vuitton Foundation) 1) or the later Hans Hartung, from his spray painting period, Diane Benoit du Rey considers and embraces painting as a "luminous material," as a source of light. Proceeding by layering to bring forth the radiant power of colors from the depths of the background and set them in motion in an infinite number of nuances, the painter extracts the very essence of the paint, which here seems to infuse light into the very essence of the colors, soon to be transformed into colored vapors: everywhere it vibrates, it stirs, it throbs… Thus, the great Colored disc Installed in Versailles, the central yellow cloud, like a beating heart, sets all the surrounding iridescent vapors pulsing in a maelstrom of gradations. A hypnotic work, like the paintings that depict in close-up the subtle transitions from blue to pink, from pink to yellow, and from yellow to bluish-green… Fascinating chromatic mutations where one can see, among other optical phenomena, phosphenes or retinal persistences, those luminous colors and spots that we perceive with our eyes closed.
This exploration of light and color, which transcends the flatness of the canvas and, in its movement, seems to possess a third, or even a fourth dimension, has also been explored by the artist in 3D with his luminous sculptures, called Lumen. Sorts of neon sculptures in lacquered glass, hybrid objects, both painting and sculpture, intended to "bring painting to light", they were made in collaboration with a glassmaker, a lacquerer and a lighting expert, and were presented at Design Miami last December.
Until April 2, 2024. See Acumen no 39.
solo show "Inside"
Le Feuvre & Roze Gallery
164, rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, Paris 8e
From January 13 27 2024 in
lefeuvreroze.com
solo show "Lumen"
Open Stage Gallery
72, rue Mazarine, Paris 6e
March 2024
Publishing: Hypnosis, catalogue of the eponymous exhibition held from October 20 to December 3 at the Espace Richaud in Versailles, Lord Byron editions
