Bénédicte Gerin

Bénédicte Gerin has long since crossed the traditional boundaries of calligraphy. Her art does not consist in elegantly reproducing letters, but in extracting their breath, their rhythm, their inner tension — transforming them into pure gesture, into a trace that is sufficient unto itself. In this exhibition, two years after her first collaboration with the gallery, her visual language has become even more assertive and liberated.

This new series bears the mark of her travels in South America. The mountains of Salta, with their intense ochres, greens and yellows, have deeply permeated her palette. The glacier blues of Calafate, of striking mineral purity, introduce a new chromatic range. These extreme landscapes have released something in her gesture: the powerfully coloured grounds now take their place with new assurance, structuring the pictorial space with unprecedented density. The gesture — always in perpetual motion — inscribes itself within these assertive chromatic spaces, creating a dialogue between the density of the grounds and the lightness of the calligraphic traces. Each work is an improvised score in which writing ceaselessly reinvents its own visual grammar.

Bénédicte Gerin’s path has propelled her beyond the codes of calligraphy: with her, nothing is ever to be taken literally… Her whole art expresses perpetual movement. Two years after her last exhibition at Galerie Charlot, she returns with works that are all vibration... Vibrations in every tone of the mountains of Salta, ochres, greens, yellows... Right up to the glacier blues of Calafate… There is also the appearance of powerfully coloured grounds, which gradually find their place in this universe where the gesture, always, reinvents writing, trace, cadence and rhythm, in search of other scripts… In search of materials and textures that adapt to the silkiness of the support, giving a feeling of “gliding”, invisible brushes let the ink flow, while the tool hovers, quivering, over the sheet, sometimes bursting right onto the paper. Abstraction makes it possible not to encroach on our imagination. Verticality, always, preserves the energy that emanates from the works, even in square formats. Throughout the past year, this energy has found its natural extension in music, through double-improvisation live performances with a saxophonist. Who inspires whom… everything becomes dialogue. Bénédicte lets herself be carried away into a story, and music, in turn, finds its way into her paintings. But these are occasional encounters. Depriving herself of her own intimate scores would restrain her work too much. And all her works vibrate with their own musicality…