Benjamin Girard lives in Paris. His work has been presented in two of Art and You Studio’s collective shows since its opening, in July 2007.

We thought it essential to pursue our relationship with this artist whose practice and talent deserve a wider exposure, within the French scene, and beyond.

We are extremely happy to host Benjamin Girard’s first solo show, « The Ghost in the Machine », which will take place March 14 through April 12, 2008.

The title of the exhibit offers new perspectives towards the mysterious links to be found between the body and the soul, the parts and their sum. The paintings are mostly new work produced for this specific event, as a clear representation of a new level in the artist’s work.

If reality lies in the eye of the beholding artist, it also, more than anything, the artist’s power also lies in the possibility of resisting against time.

Benjamin Girard : The Sum of It All.

In these a-changing times, proof of change might be seen in the recent, yet massive evolution of the art markets. And while our times offer us paradoxical mediatic bubbles bursting with joy as more and more visitors, thoughout the world, roam through museums, galleries, and art centres, one certitude remains.

Artists belong to these changing times, to what can be seen as the beginnings of a mutating 21st century. This grants artists the freedom to change, to search, to renew themselves in a surprisingly constant flow.

In theory, Benjamin Girard does not condone the ever so worn-out “series” concept. Yet, in his artistic practice, series, have been and are, well, constant. The Nounes have accompanied him since his student years, his Houses were built with Portraits for neighbors. And when he started knocking our their colors out of Boxers in 1998 and on, it enabled him to somewhat grasp, in light strokes, what makes him such a singular artist. Both his Frictions and his Iclônes series, between 2004 and 2006, allowed those who were following his work to explore the process.

Benjamin Girard embodies our capacity to find within our own yearnings and circonspections, a momentum. They who stood yesterday, with a sceptical, if concentrated frown, facing the Boxers, often taken by surprise by the sudden and undeniable intimacy they could feel weaving its way between them and the canvas, are today’s buyers and collectors of works which allow them to, at last and with relief, “see painting”.

Serial painting does not mean repetition for Benjamin Girard. It simply acts as an opportunity to meander through the fields of possible stories, potential images. With him, repetition leaves room for infinitely small modifications. Through modification, Benjamin Girard does not mean to change, but to transform. His movement is that of inflexion. To inflect the line, ever so lightly, is to create something else by perpetuating the image. Take two, erase, start over,repeat, stop. The very slow evolution in each of his series enables the artist to create unicity.

The canvas is the other. Since the other is not seen whole, the mysterious part remains. Since I do not offer myself whole, there’s much more to me than what is seen. Benjamin Girard’s caracters only offer parts of themselves, but they’re so strongly defined that they exist beyong the walls, between the lines. Freed, they exist outside the box, outside the frame.

As they escape their terrible parent’s inflexions, he who pieces, covers, spreads, erases even, in order to show more, Girard’s caracters access their total freedom of being. I am, even headless, even handless, even blind, I am me, fully, I am the sum of it all.