Quelques Sphinx 2016

Benoit Maire created these paintings called ‘Quelques Sphinx’ with oil, but it’s the way he uses the paint that really grabs me; it's almost like he's not trying to cover the surface completely, letting the ghost of the canvas peek through. Look closely, and you'll see these cloudy, amorphous shapes floating in the picture plane. They feel like they've been built up layer by layer, with some parts thick and opaque, while others are so thin they're practically transparent. And below, these marks read as a kind of landscape, maybe a forest? It’s like they’ve materialized through a process of accumulation and erasure. I am reminded of the paintings of Forrest Bess, a fellow traveler in the realms of the strange and wonderful. In the end, art is always a conversation; an artist asks a question, and another answers, and on it goes.