To the question "why do you paint landscapes nonstop? " in 1970, Gerhard Richter replied that he took pleasure in painting something beautiful." Benoit Trimborn says the same thing by offering mediating landscapes towards aesthetic contemplation.
We are far from the exaggerations of some contemporary art scenes where the outrageous visual solicitation rivals with trendy fashions and trends; it is fortunate that some artists hold a different course, assuming with integrity and perseverance their aesthetic convictions. The Strasbourg native Benoit Trimborn is one of them: he brings together the authentic artist and the viewers whom he addresses with generosity.
Trimborn thus offers the viewer the chance of going on an immobile voyage, a tribute to slowness and silence that encourages a meditative contemplation through the use of unique and irreplaceable images, the fruits of his frank and visionary gaze as well as his unparalleled craftsmanship.
To paint
To paint the four elements
To paint the four seasons
To paint space and time by captivating the vibration of the atmosphere, the humming of the air, the chills of the water ruffled by the wind, the heat of the sun and the fog covering the folds and creases of the Earth
To paint the absence of man, cautiously confined to the space off the canvas, only present through his agricultural achievements
To paint the grooves, fields and roads as marks on the skin of the Earth
Diving in color which describes the space of time, reflecting a happy achrony, the delectation of a moment in time. The artist could make Barnett Newman’s motto his own: "painting is when I paint." He would not deny the gracious auspices of Gaston Bachelard, a man so sensitive to poetry’s powerful elements, generator of dreams and fantasies while not necessarily adhering to the metaphorical and narrative arsenal of the famous philosopher. For Benoit Trimborn, no fiction, let alone self-fiction, no philosophical or allegorical messages, nothing but time and space planted in the pigment and canvas.
The critic impressed by such rigor and modesty, can not help but point out two important dimensions in the painter who based his work on his architectural training and practice of music. Analysis of the paintings whose titles are neither pithy nor laconic but simply neutral to preserve any pathos or emotion, shows a clever and mastered construction where lines, planes and volumes to meet, allowing the geometric-architect to become the surveying painter of the piece of nature he has chosen to mark. Their musical dimension is evident, given the rhythmic arrangement that runs through the grounds as well as changes and weather fluctuations punctuated by silence.
The artist, secret modesty and concerned about the respect and freedom of the beholder, does not engage in any gloss on his creative process; despite his reluctance, he lets in some valuable insights on the methods of his approach. First of all, using his camera he turns himself into a hunter of which he later reframes the views in his workshop. Then he transfers on the canvas a quick sketch once the pattern is chosen. Finally begins the slow process of painting, still in the workshop and never outdoors.
The regular practice of landscape, ambitious confrontation with reality, appears as a soothing counterpoint to the madness and violence of men. Benoit Trimborn protects himself from the surrounding uproar and spectacularly visible obscenity because by seeing too much our society no longer knows how to look. He takes refuge in his canvas not to escape but to concentrate on the peaceful exploration of reality. The microcosm thus obtained, a concrete and intimate truth, allows access to the universal by becoming the watchful mediator between nature and culture.
The artist paints a non-calendar time and shares with us the music of a perhaps worried soul, anxious to achieve Uhrlicht, original light, so dear to Gustav Mahler. Relentless pursuit of beauty to dismiss the anxiety in the margins of the frame. Benoit Trimborn offers us a work of classic but never academic taste: a free representation of all the trends in fashion and formal dictates of the institutions. His paradoxical modernity and contemporaneity undoubtedly reside in the "bias of things" that adopts like the poet Francis Ponge.
The indolent mystery of nature, the impassive power of his presence, in some word his given beauty, sometimes suggests to me a harmonious and timeless fraternity of the artist with songs from Democritus and Virgil.
The work of Benoit Trimborn is deserving: it’s serene and soothing appearance requires attention and patience to decipher its preciousness, sometimes fantasy like and the undeniable elegiac dimension.
Without knowing why
I love this world
Where we come to die
Natsume Soseki
-Francis Meyer, September 2015
Translated by Andrea Garcia
Stratus Nebulosus, oil on canvas 43 3/4" x 63"