SACRED ELEPHANTAND THE

LAUGHING MONKEY—

MARION BENOIT

MAISON JOANNE

The exhibition Sacred Elephant and the Laughing Monkey was made possible by Maison Joanne. By supporting young and talented artists, Maison Joanne expresses its belief in perpetual renewal and in the idea that art is a marker of time.

If it is true that our gaze forms what we see, then we need to define what constitutes our gaze in order to really see. In this way of thinking, seeing belongs to that mythological domain where no words exist and everything is fluid.

For her ongoing series Sacred Elephant and the Laughing Monkey, photographer Marion Benoit focuses on the vines of her region of birth. Or rather : she uses photography to become immersed in their intricate patterning, the result of an age-old tradition of cultivation and transformation of a sprawling vine into a short trunk growing close to the soil.

Benoit’s practice, or should we say craft, is untimely slow. By using a large format camera, carefully selecting and reworking the images, she focuses on her object until it is no longer what we originally perceived; a process one could compare to that of repeating the same word over and over until it becomes meaningless sound and matter. The photographs become like abstract expressionist paintings that — literally, as they are captions — get disconnected from their original reality. The result is an inventory of the multitude that lies within one single object, which has existed and been seen for at least as long as western civilisation exists. The photographs are like projection screens that highlight what each individual spectator can see in the patterns : a sacred elephant, a laughing monkey... At the same time, the vine is as much a metaphor of what is cultural in nature, as it is of what is natural in culture. The patterns of the vines result from human intervention, but each vine also follows its singular, natural ways. The object is paradoxically as much a painting of what we see in it as it is a mechanical photograph of the light it reflects. We can approach it using our eyes, a camera, or words, but we cannot conquer or understand it by doing so.

Sacred Elephant and the Laughing Monkey invites a primitive, mythological gaze to understand the unintelligible and the formless. The series asks the viewer to be as slowly and endlessly immersed in the image as the artist was when she conceived them.

Koen Sels

Foreword

Sacred Elephant and the Laughing Monkey

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Sacred Elephant and the Laughing Monkey, 2010, 55,8 x 74 cm inkjet print on baryta paper.Zeniba, 2010, 55,8 x 74 cm inkjet print on baryta paper. La Jeune Fille, 2010, 100 x 133,2 cm inkjet print on baryta paper.Nereus, 2011, 55,8 x 74 cm inkjet print on baryta paper.Mask, 2011, 55,8 x 74 cm inkjet print on baryta paper.

Special thanks : Brünhilde B. Groult, Lily Benoit, Koen Sels, Ben Van den Berghe, Sara Matthews

Maison Joanne, Studio Deepix, Antoine Calafat, Edith Ricaux, Julie EstebanChâteau Canon, Château Cheval Blanc, Château Latour

Printed in an edition of 70 by Graphit‘s in Bordeaux© 2012 Marion Benoit

www.marion-benoit.com