Benoît Mercier

Benoît Mercier's work seeks to reveal the essence of things or beings. Beyond appearances, artifices, he strips, simplifies, purifies to reach depth, where the nature of things germinates, where life blooms. It is this life that he breathes into his works which have made all their dynamics.

Far from dwelling on the surface of beings, Benoît Mercier suggests them through their silhouette. There is no need for the detail of a face to express what animates it, its silhouette sums it up. His characters are represented by stylized contours, a refined line, which sometimes leads him to tend towards abstraction.

His work is an aesthetic of the line.

At the origin of this addiction, the wonder at the lines offered by the landscapes, the crests of the hills in the mist, the undulations of the deserts and the call of distant horizons, the edges... These lines are always borders between two worlds, between two materials... from their confrontation, life is born. The line does not separate, it is a zone of fertilization.

Benoît Mercier's line is recognized by the freedom of the gesture, the suppleness of the sequence that is both tender and dynamic, tending towards the accuracy of the subject.

In his 3D works, his line develops in space. For his metal sculptures, he starts with a flat sheet that he cuts and shapes by twisting, bending, bending…. Life manifests itself as soon as the flat figure takes on volume. Then form concave parts, others convex, on which the light comes to play. The void created between the sheet metal figures then takes shape, the void becomes full. Between the work of the line, the work of curvatures and folds, the work of emptiness and fullness, the work of shadow and light, he furrows the depth to bring out the light.

Benoît Mercier has been sculpting for 20 years. Draftsman, painter, engraver and designer, he lives and works in Dinan.