Benoît Singy

MORNING SCALES - APRIL23
For me, these works represent a new approach to movement, based on a restraint and restart, movement in jerks. Like rhythms and musical notes following one another, but eventually creating harmony and coherence. Music affects us. It arouses emotions and feelings. In the same way, painting allows us to escape from our daily lives. I've also taken up one of my favorite themes, that of the, which in this case is a slit scratched into the support itself, enabling us to go beyond appearances. 

MORNING SCALES - MAY22
After a close friend died, the "Morning Scales" series appeared in the form of a large book, my notes fading into the afterlife. These conceptual works emphasize a work on trace, a description of glyphs carried away in a silent symphony.

BY THE RIVER

The sound of a river, the sound of a stream crossing the plot and the trout, silent by nature, gliding between shadows and reflections, the same scene in the rustling of the foliage, barely perceptible through the flapping of the heron's wings.To perceive and transmit the unfolding of a summer's day, recognizable by the shifts of light that take possession of the place in the morning and gradually lose the battle against the spreading shadows of the night that never comes. The artist immerses in the torpor of scorching summer days, sparing his gestures to write only the essential. 

THE CLAW AND THE ETHER
Patient line-drawing and personal digression about the potential of consciousness, birthing the ego, and the process of individuation. How can this "I", which I express in a firm, vertical line, emerge from a vibration, the random vibration of basic particles, or from my Fineliner line, which I'm trying to make as regular as possible? This "I" is stretched between a solid gold, into which it anchors its claw, and the etheric line of black ink. This way, each work in the series can be seen as a full-length self-portrait.

THE BOW AND THE HAND
Chinese calligraphy creates the "I" by combining two signs: the bow and the hand. My digressions on the origin of Self-awareness persist. In the infinitely small there is no more matter or energy, only information flows, vibrating strings, and it is through my strong vertical gesture that consciousness is asserted, the consciousness that observation, the human hand, brings to light, the power of which will be expressed in the projection of a stone and then an arrow into the distance, allowing our gaze to rise to the horizon. It's this growing monstrous power of the human species that I want to depict in these works, albeit in a small format.

PROJECTION
Personal digressions around the notions of consciousness and ego in this patient pattern of convolutions that I'd like to keep as regular as possible. Having reached the bottom of the format, I can finally trace this "I" in a vertical line resolutely stretched between a solid gold and the ripples of black ink. This awareness is also given by the hand which, by throwing a stone and then an arrow into the distance with a bow, has enabled us to look up at the horizon. As the ego becomes more and more assertive, it separates itself from the world, casting a shadow over it, which in turn hides a part of it. Each of the works in this series can thus be seen as a full-length portrait. 

IMPROVISATION
In this series, which I've been pursuing for several years, I explore the world of improvisation. First I spread a thick layer of oil paint over the entire surface of the canvas, most of it monochrome. Then I work this mass with a fine spatula, letting myself be carried away by the rhythms and moods of previously chosen music. This work requires deep awareness, in order to pulse with the material, the body and the music. The idea is to remain both open and responsive to the unexpected, during the entire creative act. Some of the works in the series were created on stage, in front of an audience, improvising in duet with a jazz-trained pianist.
 
PALIMPSESTS 
The work in this series, "Palimpsests", is based on questioning the components of a work of art hidden by others. Each work matches an enigma that is revealed by breaking free from our own paradigms. On the canvas, I first laid down a back-world, a sequence that I deliberately left unsolved. Like any back-world, immersed subconscious, it disappears behind the screen of reality. Only a few traces remain, the outline of a story. The real is this layer of paint, applied, then dug, scratched, mishandled by the impulses of the moment; we can never return to it, because this impermanence is permeable to the vibrations of light. At the very end I draw the slit, a theme dear to me, this scratch through the entire thickness of the palimpsest, a mirror that allows us to cross the appearance of things and perhaps go back in time to that forever lost back world. In this way, the painting duplicates itself.