Variations in Variations

From 15 December 2022 to 31 March 2023 by Damien Bénéteau

Curator : Djeff

For the past ten years, Damien Bénéteau has been developing a series of sculptures, Variations, which make tangible the ordinarily imperceptible forces that govern our universe. Each one consists of a mechanical, kinetic and optical device that allows human perception to grasp the flow of time and the cyclical structure of the universe in a form of sensitive evidence. In a pendulum movement, a ball passes at regular intervals through a pierced plate, perpendicular to its plane of oscillation. The minimalism of the volumes, the abstraction of the geometric forms, the coldness of the metal and the slowness of the rhythm together form a microcosm reduced to its minimum significance, like a star reduced to its most elementary physical dimension. Each Variation reflects its play of light and shadow in the immediate environment and seeks to draw the eye into an almost meditative state. This work is now evolving towards more immersive.

This work is now evolving towards more immersive, more technical and larger-scale forms, with the influence of kinetic art and op’art on his work. From the former, he retains the idea that movement is a medium in itself, a generator of forms in its own right, and from the latter, the idea that an optical game is capable of redesigning the world.

For his project at the Vasarely Foundation, Damien Bénéteau took up the form of the pendulum, thought out on the scale of a building, like Foucault’s pendulum at the Pantheon. Fixed to the ceiling, at a height of 11 metres, the installation is based on the same principle as the Variations: a sphere in movement crosses an imposing metal plate placed vertically, cut out from its entire height and lit from its inner edge. Treated in the mass, it presents two surfaces leaning against each other – one side matt, the other silvered – even if the ball, of a black without brilliance, does not produce a mirror effect and leaves, around it, a small effect and leaves Vasarely’s works intact around it. Unlike Foucault’s pendulum, its movement is not correlated with the Earth’s rotation. An autonomous magnetic device engages it in a manifestly infinite pendulum movement. The plasticity of movement, its capacity to sculpt forms in matter as in perception, is then manifested with force, and in a certain nakedness. When it passes through the plate, the ball sees its relief remodelled by the light, which animates its volume and makes its contours more prominent. Its movement makes its features appear, the kinetic sensation is transformed into visual perception. At their point of coincidence, the ball and the plate, aligned on the same vertical axis, even draw a falsely flat compositiona falsely flat composition, which a front viewer can furtively grasp as two-dimensional. The plastic becomes graphic, the sculpture becomes a painting or a drawing.

In this installation, the interaction between movement, volume and light creates an environment marked by depth, mystery and a certain solemnity. The slow and regular oscillation of the mobile sculpture is part of a temporal loop that calls to mind the image of a metronome or a chronometric measuring instrument. Without giving in to playfulness, or auspectacularity, the installation shows in all its simplicity the common deployment of time and space. It particularly focuses attention on the dilation of duration, raising awareness of time as historically lived, in consciousness, as well as time as a physical and perceptive-cognitive phenomenon. Variations in Variations ends up being read as a poetic interpretation of gravity revealed in the past, a suspended and stretched present that is replayed here ad infinitum.

– Florian Gaité