Bénédicte Gimonnet
In Search of Eden
Aisha Alabbar Gallery, Dubai
11 January - 18 February 2023
Aisha Alabbar Gallery presents In Search of Eden by Bénédicte Gimonnet. In her first solo exhibition at the gallery, the UAE-based French painter creates new imaginative environments where, like an idealistic idiom of multiculturalism, difference literally grows and feeds from each other. It’s the antonym for “garden variety” – an Eden that necessarily embodies diversity, and Bénédicte gathers disparate material and conceptual elements together.
Plants are the protagonists of her work. The artist emphasises what grows from the land is metonymic, or a carrier, for the emotions and conditions experienced by other living beings. Nature has undoubtedly framed the artist’s life. As a young child, she was raised by a single mother in Auvergne, France after the latter’s separation with her Peruvian father, and consequently having to leave behind the two years they had spent living in Peru. Bénédicte Gimonnet’s mother urged her to forget this side of her roots, leaving a soil-like residue of loss that has continued to reverberate up until now in the older artist’s practice. Amid decades in France, then the UK, and now the UAE, those brief yet intensely vivid memories of Latin America have lived on in symbols of plants in Bénédicte’s work.
The genesis of this series goes back to the onset of the pandemic in 2020, when the UAE went into lockdown. Bénédicte Gimonnet was deprived of her usual creative comforts and inspirations: walking and trekking in nature, and of course travelling. With memories from a last trip to Seychelles still fresh in her mind, she dove into her subsequently triggered memories of Peru’s plants and forests, letting them go on some aluminium panels she still had in her studio. The free-flowing landscapes, oozing a heady sense of abandonment and escape, offered her familiar “bursts of freedom” during quarantine. The series continues to grow even now showing no signs of stopping. Multiple ink drawings have flowered within and outside of the paintings, more intricate and immersive by the day. Some of these are black and white, like the construction drafts of a new paradise. Or architectural prints of utopia. To achieve fresher depths for her plant subjects, Bénédicte Gimonnet is also constantly trying out new juxtapositions of “unmixable materials”, like oil and vinegar, taking notes with the erudite taxonomy of a botanist. Bénédicte Gimonnet uses vibrant, often tropical colours, drawing on her sound knowledge of colour theory to build rhythmic contrasts on canvas, wood, and aluminum surfaces. Through years of experimentation, the artist has mastered methods of layering different consistencies of paints and mediums. She allows mixtures to spread, interact, and settle within controlled spaces. The un-mixable nature of these substances creates geometric motifs that result from layering acrylic and oil-based paints, as well as textures that are sometimes smooth and reflective through the use of vitrail or rugged by applying layers of enamel to paints.
For Bénédicte Gimonnet, Eden represents a place of refuge and solace where she can recharge her batteries and reconnect with herself. But it is also symbolic of the lost paradise of her Peruvian childhood, a root that she had to keep cut for a long time, but that still, like a stubborn leaf in wintry soil, persisted. It is necessary that Eden is illusory, imaginative, only really grasped through the alchemy of repeated human effort and labour and pushing. After all, the search for Eden is an instantly relatable quest – aren’t we all, as Voltaire wrote, trying to “cultivate our own garden”?
BENEDICTE GIMONNET - SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Bénédicte Gimonnet (b. Clermont-Ferrand, France, 1969) has lived, worked, and been part of the arts ecosystem in the UAE for over 13 years. Bénédicte Gimonnet’s painting practice comprises a deliberate explosion of bold colours and technical innovation, mixing supposedly unmixable painting materials together, and creating immersive, intricate, and visually seductive environments. The strong colour palette references Peruvian folklore, while the compositions mimic the Amazonian rainforest that is deliberately not botanically, geographically, to seasonally correct to reflect the diversity of colourful experiences that shape one’s individuality and identity.
Bénédicte Gimonnet had several solo exhibitions in the UAE, including Confluence (a collaborative exhibition with Dr. Najat Makki), La Galerie, Alliance Française, Dubai (2021); Between Macro and Micro, La Galerie, Alliance Française, Dubai (2019); Organicus Mundus, Khalidiya Palace, Abu Dhabi (2011); and Infinity Small, Infinity Large, Alliance Française, Abu Dhabi (2009). Bénédicte Gimonnet is participating in the 38th Annual Exhibition - Emirates Fine Arts Society, Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah, UAE (2023). Her works have been shown in many group exhibitions in the UAE and internationally, including While the Coffee Grounds Settle, Fathom Gallery in Georgetown, Washington, DC (2022); Disconnect & Reconnect (Part one and two), Etihad Modern Art Gallery and Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, UAE; The Art Circle Award 2021, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2022); Emirates Fine Arts Society Exhibition, Expo2020, Dubai, UAE (2022); Interconnection: 37th Annual Exhibition - Emirates Fine Arts Society, Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah, UAE (2021); Together We Art, LP4Y, Champs-Elysées, Paris, France (2021); Caravane & Guests at the French Residence, Institut français, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2019); Travelling Light, Etihad Modern Art Gallery, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2017); Accrochages, Salwa Zeidan Gallery, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2014 – 2015); City, Desert and Sea, Alliance Française, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2014); National Day, Etihad Modern Art Gallery, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2013); Watchwomen and Dreamcatchers, Institut Français, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2013); Regards sur les Emirats, Embassy of France & Ministry of Culture, UAE (2012); Globe, Salwa Zeidan Gallery, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2010 – 2011); London Art Fair, corbettPROJECTS, London, UK (2009); Red Dot New York (with Cynthia Corbett Gallery), New York, USA (2009); Français of the Year 2008 Ceremony, London, UK(2008); Red Dot Miami, (with Cynthia Corbett Gallery), Miami, USA; Slick Paris, Le 104, corbettPROJECTS, Paris, France (2008); AAF New York, The Cynthia Corbett Gallery, New York, USA (2007 – 2009); Light and Colour, Cynthia Corbett Gallery, London, UK (2007); Deutsch Postbank Exhibition, London, UK (2005).
Bénédicte Gimonnet received the inaugural Art Circle Award, Abu Dhabi, UAE in 2021. She is also a member of the Emirates Fine Arts Society. The artist earned a BFA in painting from UAL: Wimbledon College of Arts in 2006.
Bénédicte Gimonnet ’s works are in a number of collections around the world, including Goldman Sachs and Women’s Museum in Dubai, Abu Dhabi Executive Office, The Art Circle Collection and Khalidiya Palace in Abu Dhabi, Champagne PG P&F Epernay, France, and Clerical Medical London, UK, in addition to private collections in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, USA, Russia, Australia, Japan, and Europe.
AISHA ALABBAR GALLERY
S1 Mag Warehouse 101, Al Quoz 2, Dubai
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