Tableau Captain America, 2015

Alben  

Alben, born in 1973, lives and works in New Aquitaine.

Self-taught artist, Alben has been collecting and accumulating objects since adolescence. First attracted by graffiti, his first paintings mix stencil technique, screen printing and stamps. Inspired by the new realists and more particularly Arman and César, his work of resin sculptures has been developing for ten years.

The specificity of Alben's work is that it makes no claim to be part of any artistic movement. Autonomous and independent artist, he is moving towards the transcription of contemporary immediacy, experimenting and inventing techniques that digest forms to elevate them to the rank of icons.

The only vocation of Alben consists in the transcription of a raw immediacy, the spectator is transported in a spatio-temporal universe shifted. The artist fills molds with various perfectly trivial objects (candies, cars, forks…) which he integrates into resin. The use of these collected objects, often linked to childhood, reinforces this impression of nostalgia at the heart of Alben's artistic practice.

Despite the fact that Alben is a self-taught artist, he seamlessly draws inspiration from a multitude of aesthetics belonging to classical as well as contemporary art. Look at his sculptures, we can detect tributes to Renaissance, Surrealism, Pop and Street Art; Alben's work is a catalyst for contemporary thought.

The universality of Alben's images invites the viewer to set up their own internal dialogues. As the eye jumps frantically from one subject to another, one is able to see the story through the allegory of art. In a world where everything becomes a symbol of knowledge already consumed, Alben's sculptures beg the viewer to recognize his state of “presentness".

Alben's work is held in public and private collections around the world: Paris, Dubai, Hong Kong, Australia, Bordeaux, London, Zurich, Italy, Mexico, New York, San Diego and Chicago.