Plastic Duck & Astro Kitty, 2025

Ben Labarthe  

In his paintings, Ben Labarthe explores sensitive territories where landscapes become veritable battlegrounds of emotion. He enjoys playing with composition and texture, his illustrative style lending his paintings a spontaneous and vibrant energy. Bold colors, poetic imagery: everything is designed to capture the dynamism of the moment. Nourished by urban culture and the world of manga, his work depicts memories or stories in the making.
For Ben, painting isn't just something to be looked at, it's something to be experienced. It invites you to immerse yourself in it, to let yourself be carried away, to invent your own interpretation, like a contemplative scene into which intention has been injected. Nothing is static, everything is in motion. And because he loves to surprise, the artist goes even further: in keeping with his canvases, he offers an immersive experience. Each artwork is accompanied by a QR code which, once scanned with a phone, reveals a surprise and creates a dialogue between the painting and the digital world. Another way to enter his universe, one augmented pixel at a time.
By integrating augmented reality into his canvases, like a hidden door, it is the viewer who reveals the artwork. By triggering the animation, they become an active participant, interacting with the work and bringing it to life in a new way. The image is no longer simply viewed, but experienced. This interaction questions our relationship to art: Where does the artwork begin and where does the viewer end? Here, the two meet and are transformed. It's not a gimmick, just a fun and engaging way to transcend the traditional frame and allow the artwork to live on a little longer.