For his first exhibition with gallery 208, Benjamin Sabatier presents works resembling large watercolors dripping with abstraction. It is a true homage that Sabatier pays to the Support/Surface movement, whose legacy he has always claimed. The artist’s relentless experimentation, starting from previous works through their recycling, embarks on a curious psychoanalysis.
Benjamin Sabatier exhibition is characterized by his use of materials resulting from building site, such as the concrete. He thus inscribes himself in an approach where work appears as the model standard of our current societies.
Biography
Benjamin Sabatier was born in 1977 in Le Mans. He lives and works in Paris.
He comes from a family of visual artists. His parents, former students of Claude Viallat at the Beaux-Arts, were active figures in contemporary art in the 1980s.
At a young age, Benjamin Sabatier participated in the creation of several works in collaboration with the American artist Keith Haring.
Between 1995 and 2001, Benjamin Sabatier studied art at the University of Rennes 2 where he obtained a DEA and the Agrégation. Since 2008, he teaches Visual Arts at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.
In 2002, first appearance in a public institution, at the Palais de Tokyo, where he presents the performance-installation 35 hours of work. It consists in sharpening pencils seven hours a day for five days.
Benjamin Sabatier has chosen to place his work under the “Do it yourself” imperative, the best way according to him to “rematerialize” reality. The paradoxical theoretical influence of Haring and the Support/Surface group on his work forms a singular and explosive cocktail.
An artist of action, Sabatier insists in his social approach to art on the importance of the material and the involvement of the spectator. Performance, painting, sculpture, installation, video, he always uses the one that seems to him the most relevant to create meaning. The theoretical influence of Haring and the Support/Surface group on his work forms a singular and explosive cocktail.
