MAKING THE INVISIBLE PRESENT

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Exploring Exploring immanence and its possibilities, revealing a presence, bringing a reality to light... Entirely based on this philosophical principle, Benjamin Ottoz’s artistic process tends to reveal forms inherent in the medium itself, to make the invisible present, offer to the viewer what he could not see.

 

Benjamin Ottoz’s plastic researches come from Serendipidy. When a day spray paint accidentally touchdown on a piece of crumpled paper, he discovers a new potentiality for this medium. Once crumpled, folded, pressed, tested, paper offers unsuspected, intriguing and captivating forms and volumes. With a well-established protocol including extreme handling of the paper, its painting and flattening, Benjamin Ottoz develops a contemplative poetry of this medium.

 

For the artist, the work is a revelation of what was inside the object, specific to its plasticity, like a photograph capturing what could not perceive by eye. Neither photography, nor painting, nor sculpture, this work is all of these at once. The volume gained by the paper places it in an in-between, a form of second and half dimension, neither two-dimensional nor completely three-dimensional. Essential for creating this state and these forms, Benjamin Ottoz’s manipulations reveal the inherent potential of this object and manifest a poetry of immanence.

 

This artistic research has led the artist to other supports, rock surfaces whose texture, roughness and variations tell a story revealed by Benjamin Ottoz’s intervention. Once the paint applied on the rock reveals its poetic potential with its fine, pure and abstract creating a play of chiaroscuro by capturing the light here and there, like a twilight landscape. An artistic gesture which joins the other poetic revelations of Benjamin Ottoz...

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EDUCATION

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2011 - Master / Creation and studies of contemporary arts (CEAC) - University of Lille 3

 

2009 - DNSEP / Nantes Métropole School of Fine Arts

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EXHIBITIONS

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2022    

- ART-O-RAMA - King's Avenue - Marseille

- Art Fair Dijon - Bear Skin Gallery - Dijon

- Solo show: Pierre Papier Peinture - Gallery The skin of the bear - Brussels

- Cabinet of curiosities - Avenue du Roi, inhabited place of art - Brussels

- Twenty Art Fair - Avenue du Roi - Brussels

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2020      

- The space between - gethan&myles - Double V Gallery - Marseille

- Solo show: RUPESTRE INSITU - Empty House - Crugny 

- Residence: RUPESTRE - Empty House - Crugny - France 

- Art in the center - Liège      

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2019

- Contemporary Istanbul - Double V Gallery 

- Solo show: Dust / Curated by Elodie Bernard -  Galerie The skin of the bear -  Bruxelles

- Everything must disappear -  Galerie Provost-Hacker - Lille​

- THE SAGA II - Double V Gallery - Marseille​

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2018

- BIT20 / Biennale of the tangible image - Paris 20th

- SWAB Barcelona Art Fair - DoubleV Gallery / Curator Emmanuelle Oddo

- Range Of Beauty - Cédric Bacqueville Gallery /  Commissariat Aurélien Maillard  – Lille

- Paréidolie / International Contemporary Drawing Fair - Double V Gallery - Marseille   

- Mix and Match – Gallery The skin of the bear / Curator Elodie Bernard - Brussels 

- Mediatine / Wolubilis Prize - Brussels

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2017

- Solo Show: Ninfa Fluida - Stories of folds -  SKMM, Native auctions - Bruxelles 

- Paysage, fiction de la matière -  Plateforme - Paris 

- SHELTERS by LaMontagne / LaVallée - Brussels 

- Art Sablon & Native Auctions with SMM Limited Editions - Brussels 

- YIA Art Fair with SMM Limited Editions - Brussels

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2016         

- Landscapes in declination -  L'Escaut - Brussels

- LaMontagne / LaVallée - Brussels

- The vagaries of memory - Cabinet Infhotep - Paris

- Solo Show : Serendipity - Art and Go - Tourconig   

- Passages -  Galerie de la Reine  - Bruxelles

- Sketch My Mind gallery Fayla (Sablon) - Brussels

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2015

- ArBAEsAEsbaNM / NTE-BXL - Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Brussels

- BURASHI NO OTO HANMA CHINMOKU -  MilleFeuilles - Nantes

 

2014      

- MIC FEST / Sciences Po Lille

 

2013      

- They were corrupted by colors, sounds and shapes -  The apartment

 

2012

- Solo Show: HIERARCHY - Museum of Art and Industry, La Piscine - Roubaix 

 

2011

- 56th Salon de Montrouge

 

2010

- adspicere - Hall Alstom - Nantes 

 

2009

- LEM (Lunar Excursion Module) - Nantes School of Architecture - Nantes

 

2008 

- John Rimbaud - Felix Thomas Workshops - Nantes

- Exhibition at Yokohama France Video Collection Red Brick Warehouse Akanenga -Yokohama - Japan

- + 2 Sheaves - Esbanm Gallery - Nantes 

- Love Me Tender, Love Me Trouble - Ateliers Félix Thomas - Nantes 

 

2007

- Hashiru Kanazawa / White Sands  - Galerie de l'Esbanm - Nantes 

- Collective screening at the Museum of the 21st Century - Kanazawa - Japan 

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PUBLICATIONS

 

2016 - Sketch My Mind / Label silkscreen edition n°1/30

 

2015 - Erectile Magazine #10 / Text Martin Van Boxsom

 

2013 - Revue 50° Nord / Text by Julie Crenn
 

2013 - Malting program / Text Benjamin Ottoz
 

2011 - Catalog 56° Salon de Montrouge / Text by Dorothée Dupuis
 

2009 - DVD and catalog of the group exhibition Hashiru Kanazawa.
 

2008 - Catalog + reality / Published on the occasion of the exhibition at Hangar à Bananes, Nantes.