86 AVENTURA MAGAZINE

ARTIST BÉNÉDICTE BLANC-FONTENILLE’S UNIQUE,

WATERBORNE CREATIONS BESPEAK A MESSAGE OF

PEACE WHILE MESMERIZING WITH THEIR BEAUTY.

By Michelle Payer

InspirationFrench

87DEC 2016 / JAN 2017

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artist Bénédicte Blanc-Fontenille grew up wondering if she was truly part of the family into which she was born. After all, they lived in a spectacular castle designed by the architect who created Paris’s famous Sacré-Coeur (the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris). There were records of the family, part of France’s royal “noblesse de empire” in the 1800s, entertaining dukes, duchesses, lords and ladies; but a year before Bénédicte was born, a family member signed away the castle. All that was left were memories, photos, and a profound sense of loss, vulnerability and fragility that would become the foundation of Bénédicte’s work as an artist.

“As a child, I created costumes,” says Bénédicte, “writing notes and invitations as part of my delir-ium, to hold teas for visiting royalty. There was a sadness of something lost,” she sais. “But I grew up by the sea in Brittany and loved the water, its beauty and ever-changing nature, and through it I

understood the cycle of life. The waves became a metaphor that something may disappear even if you work hard to hold onto it. Like a wave, you go down, then come up again,” she says.

By age nine, Bénédicte was lost in drawing paper for hours, copying paintings from the dic-tionary. At 17, she applied to the famed École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Rennes, France, though she had never formally studied the craft about which she was so passionate. She was accepted (“I was shocked!” she says) and studied both visual and dramatic art, as the two schools were side-by-side in the same ancient cloister.

Her mother felt there were too many struggling artists in the world; thus, Bénédicte began her career in television production, then dabbled in comedic theater (she is currently a player

in French Theater at FIU); however, the siren song of visual art beckoned and she returned to it while still in her 20s.

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TOP TO BOTTOM: Blanc-Fontenille with her Floating Horizontals; White Personnage in plaster;

Horizontal Floating print on aluminum; approximately 20

inches in diameter.

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Now, glamorous and athletically slim befitting a noble descendant, Bénédicte looks at everything around her with an artist’s mind and philosophy of life and its fragility. It is how she creates her varied art, some of which is inspired by 17th-century still-life paintings (“an orange on the table is precariously close to the edge, to falling off; a metaphor for life”), poet Victor Hugo (“He was a great artist and worked with ink, coffee and tea”), and Claude Monet, whose water lilies at Paris’s Musée Marmottan Monet inspired her foray into creating and perfecting “Floating Horizontals,” water lilies that float, dive and undulate upon the water. They resemble stingrays in their movement and are so mesmerizing that a recent reception at Miami’s Vagabond hotel found people in poolside chaise lounges gazing at them for hours, unfazed by the party around them. “There is a symbolism of the floating horizontal water lilies,” says Bénédicte. “Peace, peace, peace.”

Bénédicte began the floating experiment in 2012 using Plexiglass, which was too rigid for her liking. It took the next three years to find the right paper, fabric, pigments and waxes for the malleable water lilies that have become pool art for global collectors. “For me, water is movement; water is life,” she says. “Everything works together in this harmonious balance of strength and fragility. It appears to me as an energy, an engine that propels the human being and gen-

erates movement, for life is nothing but movement.”

The Plexiglass lilies, which Bénédicte pho-tographs underwater, morphed into 12”x12” aluminum wall art sequences, represented by global galleries (Gauchet Fine Art in Miami, Beddington Fine Art in France and LUV Contemporary Art in South Korea). “You can create movement in an installation,” explains Bénédicte. “It is completely abstract, and again, fragile. Aluminum brings brightness to the piece, while water brings transparency.”

Bénédicte’s life is seen through art, and vice versa. Her vision extends to sculpture, including White Personage, 12-inch plaster people, all of whom are unique in their stride or pose as if reach-ing for something elusive and can be perched upon wall corners, shelves and ledges via magnets. “It signifies people in movement,” says the artist, “as nothing you do ever exists the same way again.”

Her mixed-media paintings utilize wax, paper, oxidized bronze, ashes from different types of wood, and coffee grounds for texture. For Bénédicte, it’s the idea of rebirth; everything once thought per-ishable is given new life. Rocks from the ground become sculptures that fascinate visitors to her house, who are drawn to them like their primitive ancestors once were. “It is a symbol of humanity,” explains Bénédicte. “It comes from the earth. One day, people began to take one, then another and another to build elevation. It is sym-bolic of what we do: try to go higher and higher to elevate ourselves;

{ }“For me, water is movement; water is life, everything works together in this harmonious balance of strength

and fragility. It appears to me as an energy, an engine that propels the human being and generates

movement, for life is nothing but movement.”

LEFT: L’homme volant (The Flying Man), an homage to the artist’s ancestor, the General Resnier de Goué; 36x48 inches, mixed media. ABOVE: Floating Rock; 24x48 inches, bronze powder, ashes, pigment, coffee, acrylic.

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go further in life or architecture, even though one day nature may try to take it…or us…down.”

A series of paintings show subtle white personages in the corners and a moth or butterfly in the shadows. But Bénédicte smiles. Everything has a story and they are not insects at all, but an ancestor who had a pas-sion for flying. In 1801, General Resnier de Goué built the first flying contraption that resembled wings and launched himself off the walls of Angouleme, over the Charente river and flew nearly three lengths of a football field to land with a mere broken leg. He was 72. Today he is known as the first flying man, and is honored with a model at the Musée de l’air du Bourget near Paris.

Galleries representing Bénédicte’s work only carry her aluminum Floating Horizontal installations for now. As such, collectors can call ahead and visit her studio on Key Biscayne, or purchase her Floating-Horizontals-on-silk through beautiful limited-edition scarves on http://shopvida.com/collections/benedicte-blanc-fontenille (made by women in India). In addition to exhibiting at Gauchet gallery during Art Basel, Bénédicte stages multiple installations during the year, and collaborates with choreographers to combine dance in water—with the Floating Horizontals, of course.

Currently in the throes of hosting an interactive art program on the new Bonjour America TV, Bénédicte’s dream is to stage an exhibition in a clear container (think large-scale aquarium) on the plaza of an art museum, in the bright South Florida sunlight, with swimmers and Floating Horizontals breaking the water and diving down again, seeing art in movement and representing new life underwater. She would be delighted to find a collaborator.

For now, you might see the lithe artist in the waters off Key Biscayne, navigating her paddleboard and tossing Floating Horizontals into the ocean, at one with nature while gentle waves carry her art as a symbol of peace.

To visit artist Bénédicte Blanc-Fontenille’s Key Biscayne studio, ring her at 305.299.8022 or email her at benbfkb@gmail.com.

TOP TO BOTTOM: Floating art wall (installation of 24 photos of Floating Horizontals, each one 12x12 inches); Underwater 4, 20x16 inches, in bronze powder, rust, pigments, acrylic medium; Floating Horizontals in a pool, each approximately 19x18 inches.