Repetition — 2012

Landscape Art exists in Ancient Greece (Minoan Greece), since 1500 BC.
Ancient Roman, Egyptian & Chinese landscape Art also still exists from the first century BC.
The Roman and chinese traditional landscapes show grand panaoramas of imaginary landscapes without human figures.
The Chinese ink painting tradition of „pure“ landscape, in which the only sign of human life is usually a sage, or a glimpse of his hut, uses sophisticated lands-cape backgrounds to figure subjects. Landscape art of this period retains a classic and much-imitated status within the Chinese tradition. The word landscape is from the Dutch, landschap originally meaning a patch of cultivated ground, and then an image. The word entered the English language at the start of the 17th century, purely as a term for works of art. Landscape art is a term that covers the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, with its elements arranged into a cohe-rent composition and especially art where the main subject is a wide view. Sky is almost always included in the view, and the weather is often an element of the composition.

Benoit Gob chose this genre of art for his work and deconstructed it to create within, a new contemporary interpretation.
His new cycle „Répétition“, a serial of landscape/paysage, will be shown in the Gallery of artist Producers in Schleifmühlgasse 12-14 in January 2012 (Opening 10.1.2012), is totally different to the image of landscape we have seen till now. His landscapes appeare at first sight to be blurred black and white photographies. The view opens to an unendingly capaciousness, ambiguous on the one side, with elements of total depth of field. He attaches wide open spaces with details of grass or trees, horizons or parts of grey sky.
Infinite views open up to the recipient like pictures of meditation on the one hand or like windows of an artical igloo.

On the one side the apperance of his new works is like a meeting of Caspar David Friedrich, without humans, and Milton Avery with a touch of Edward Hopper. On the other side there are no conformities in style, because his paintings are black and white and pure. The mountains are rough and impressive, blades of grass are totally naturalistic, it feels as though we could just pick it out of the image.

Benoit Gobs technique is always Mixed Media – he combines Edding/Ink/Spraycans/Acrylic on diffrent subfonts like canvas or paper. Like in the monochrome Chinese tradition he uses in his landscapes inkpencils on very bulky hand made paper, with a great emphasis on the individual brush-stroke. So it is possible for him to define wrinkles in mountain-sides and blade of grass or branches of trees.

The sizes are between 70x100cm and 150x200 cm, big enough to dive in and disappear and get lost in these infinite distances.
This unutterable beauty captures the beholder and abductes him in unknown sceneries.

Denise Parizek, Curator, 2011

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Répétitions / Samples/Wiederholungen

"Répétition d’impressions, tampons, de fragments, du même geste.
Assemblage rythmique de formes semblables qui crée l’entité paysage.
Je ne travaille pas à partir de photos mais de mémoire. Je compose l’image avec cette référence mémoire.

Je ne copie pas les éléments représentatifs de la nature dans leur diversité. Je n’en prends qu’un fragment, j’en synthétise la forme par des moyens rudimentaires et peu précis, et la reproduit indéfiniment sur le papier, en lui introduisant un rythme naturel.
Donc, je ne copie pas la nature, je la réinvente très pauvrement, la dénature au niveau de sa forme.
Je bluffe le spectateur avec l’effet séduisant du “semblable”.
Je suis dans le cliché total et j’en exploite au maximum ses codes, dans son minimalisme le plus rentable.

Des paysages bien rangés, sans identités, traités comme une organisation où le détail, la diversité dérange. Mais cependant libres et sauvages : un lieu synthétiquement vierge de détail qui curieusement séduit.
Sans ombre portée, ni ligne d’horizon ou point de fuite parfois, ces représentations cliniques semblent étrangement habitées comme des clichés ratés où l’imagination se disperse.
Le danger n’est pas dans la forme, le contenu, le sujet de l’œuvre, mais dans la manière de la représenter par des moyens aussi sournois et d’appauvrir à néant son identité."

Benoit Gob, 2011