Galerie Derouillon, Hôtel Cromot du Bourg
only by appointment
Galerie Derouillon is delighted to present Alexandre Benjamin Navet’s new solo exhibition, “PAPIERS,” a selection of works on paper in which the artist uses light to highlight everyday objects.
Since 2024, Alexandre Benjamin Navet has been living and working in the heart of nature, surrounded by greenery. In the heart of the Orléans forest between Boismorand and Les Choux, in a former hunting lodge that was once a holiday camp, the artist has set up his "studio in the forest". He has created openings to let in light and installed large bay windows. This constant dialogue with the surrounding trees, flora and fauna has intensified his attention to the world, changed his practice and brought about new sensations. This exhibition is a transcription of that experience.
Since settling in the woods, Alexandre Benjamin Navet has signed some of his drawings with the exact date they were created. It is a way of marking time, remembering it and being able to return to it. The calm and tranquillity of the surroundings are reflected on paper. So too are motifs from nature and its tools. Pruning shears, wheelbarrows, baskets. He plays with the light on objects -tables, chairs, vases, paintbrushes- that make up his everyday surroundings.
Compiling several series of drawings created in a single time and place, this book is both a sensitive memory of an environment and a testimony to a practice enriched by contact with it. It is a window onto the intimate, graphic universe of a contemporary artist living and working in the forest, in communion with living things, trees and people.
Barbara Soyer