Alexandre Benjamin Navet
Alexandre Benjamin Navet is a multi-faceted artist whose medium of choice is drawing. He draws, paints and composes scenes where flat colours and lines come alive through generous and powerful spectrums. Behind his brightly coloured compositions, a nuanced language develops where the object is connected to painting and architecture.
Indeed, architecture and decorative elements have always been a major source of inspiration, where he reappropriates the rules of perspective by playing with depth-of-field to create worlds of flat or voluminous colours.
Continuing his work on decorative elements in public space, Navet has created a colourful, theatrical, and festive décor for Nantes’ Place du Commerce inspired by the square’s own history as a port and marketplace.
To celebrate the return of life to the square, its shop signs, cafés and restaurant terraces, Navet infuses it with a new energy, creating an experience where the entire space comes alive and vibrates in colour, perhaps like it might have long ago when a ship returned to port.
Through an exploration of history, archives, and his own imagination, he summons very different worlds to redesign a life-size cityscape that borrows from the aesthetics of theatre and film sets.
By playing with frames and perspectives, using both the bland side of a set and its richly detailed surfaces, Navet invites the public to enter and discover this theatrical installation – one that permeates every element of Place du Commerce.
Alexandre Benjamin Navet was born in 1986. He lives and works in Paris.
This work was created with the support of Atlantique Boissons.
