Jesús Alberto Benitez

Born in 1978 in Valencia, Venezuela
Lives and works in Lyon, France

I work in a space in which almost everything is likely to become a drawing.

The bidimensional nature of images is confronted to the physical and concrete aspect of a printed sheet of paper. The drawing is the result of an interaction of various tools, as if it were a recording of ephemeral gestures over a surface. The empty sheet of paper is a space that can be shaped by a mark, a fold, a dot. Each image is built through the connection of gestures with concrete space. With a camera in hand, I move in a place that is real, and the space in front of me has the potential to become a tool for an image. The short moment of a shot has a duration that extends by the longer, so called fixed temporality of an image. A photograph or a drawing are objects in their own right.

They are mostly made out immaterial things, but they are also physical elements that integrate our four dimensional space-time.

With the wall, images become installation objects. The interaction with a place furthers the spatial questioning that holds into each image. The apparently empty area around each image is invariably filled by real space. The ephemeral aspect of an installation gets confronted with the apparent permanence of prints and drawings.

Images follow the spiral that extends and contracts itself through the interferences between fact and representation.

Exhibitions ( selection)
2013 – Time is the tiger – solo show, Le CAP, Saint-Fons, France
2013 – Most of the time – La Tôlerie, Clermont-Ferrand, France
2012 – Sir Thomas Trope – Villa du Parc, Annemasse, France
2012 – The Prairies – Les Ateliers de Rennes, Contemporary Art Biennial, Rennes, France
2012 – FIAC – Grand Palais, Frank Elbaz Gallery, Paris, France
2012 – The center is not a point – solo show, Frank Elbaz Gallery, Paris, France
2012 – Never the same twice, Orange Rouge project, Le 6B, Saint-Denis, France
2011 – Codex, LiveInYourHead, Geneva, Switzerland
2011 – Jeune création, Le 104, Paris, France
2011 – Years of dust covering up years of yellow, Frank Elbaz Gallery, Paris, France
2009 – European Month of Photography, Bratislava,  Slovaquie
2008 – Identities, Photography September, Lyon,  France
2007 – Paper on the desk – solo show, Le Bleu du Ciel – Le Bureau, Lyon, France
2006 – International Photography Biennial, Alejandro Otero Museum, Caracas, Venezuela