Picture

Picture

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Dreamscape












This was a truly Parisian find. By that I mean something happened upon randomly, without intention, in a perfectly serendipitous moment of discovery. Occasionally, when you're not looking too hard, Paris reveals a glimpse of its true self, as far from Eiffel Towers and crepes au chocolat as I heart Paris t-shirts are from Yves Saint Laurent.

In one of the elegant covered galeries that snake surreptitiously through the city, filtering tourists and gawpers alike, the tiny Galerie Moisan houses the latest collection from French artist Christian Benoit. Delicate, luminous and deliciously eerie, the collection of paintings represent a forgotten landscape, abandoned by inhabitants and ravaged by time. Done purely from imagination, the fictional spaces form an interior landscape fascinating in its detail and simplicity.

We stood gazing interminally, lost in Benoit's dream world, and when the kindly owner switched off the lights to enable us to see better, the paintings seemed to glow with an internal luminosity.

Galerie Martine Moisan
08, Galerie Vivienne
75002 Paris
0033 (0)1 42 97 46 65
www.galerie-moisan-benoit.com