Preview: Benoît Maire: ‘Thebes’, Spike Island

This autumn Spike Island gives its extensive exhibition spaces over to the French conceptual artist and ‘visual philosopher’ Benoît Maire, who takes his inspirations from a range of disciplines including geometry, sociology and mythology.

Maire’s major solo exhibition Thebes features more than 100 works ranging from paintings and sculptures to furniture, everyday objects and films.

Thebes continues Maire’s exploration of François Lyotard’s concept of the ‘differend’ – a notion based on the insurmountable conflict between saying and seeing. In the exhibition space, Maire sees the potential for meaning to exist without language; where the image can take the place of the word.

All pics: Benoît Maire, ‘Thebes’ (2018), installation views, Spike Island. Works courtesy the artist. Photograph by Stuart Whipps

A recurring theme in the exhibition is the question of the origin of humankind and the objects we produce.

The show owes its title to the Greek city renowned in mythology for its Sphinx, whose riddles held the inhabitants of the city hostage. Benoît Maire’s exhibition is a puzzle in which the enigmatic quality of the objects – whether manufactured by the artist himself or by others – see their uncertain origin matched by their disconcerting juxtaposition.”

“Benoît Maire’s exhibition has something for everyone,” explains Spike Island curator Vanessa Boni. “It includes over 100 artworks ranging from large oil paintings to video animation, bronze sculptures to designer chairs. Maire is both a visual artist and a philosopher: his work explores how ideas and concepts can be expressed without language.

“Visitors to the exhibition will no doubt find themselves in the midst of a puzzle where unanswered questions emerge. The exhibition title gives a clue to this as ‘Thebes’ is the name of a city in Greece famous for the myth of a sphinx guarding its entrance, who posed a riddle to anyone wishing to enter.”

Benoît Maire takes inspiration from a range of disciplines including geometry, sociology, art history and mythology. The question of distance – the space between  things, whether in conflict or harmony, and how we as humans relate to objects – is fundamental to Maire’s work. In his Spike Island exhibition, his more recent works Clouds Paintings (2015-18), War Newspapers (2016-17) and Castles (2018) are presented amongst older creations and documents reworked by the artist. Borrowed objects, such as paintings by Lito S. Freeman and furniture designed by Robert Mallet-Stevens are installed alongside religious icons, fossils, casts, shells and rocks.

The main gallery is filled with Maire’s Clouds Paintings, which draw a parallel between painting and the ever changing forms of clouds, passing through figuration and abstraction and allowing for leaps of the imagination. These paintings attempt to narrow the gap between seeing and saying by being ungraspable. Depending on how far you stand from the canvas, or how much time you spend looking, or how quickly your gaze moves across the surface, the same blue mark can be an accidental spill, a bubble of air, or a lake.

Benoît Maire: Thebes Oct 6-Dec 9, Tue-Sun 12-5pm. For more info, visit spikeisland.org.uk/events/exhibitions/exhibition-benoit-maire

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