If you look up at the balcony of 14, rue Raoul-Sarnet, you will see a very beautiful poster of contemporary art, hanging on a clothes rack.
It is the work of Benjamin Barbier, alias “Ben Dante” who is myopathic and paralyzed. He moves a hand a little and creates these works using the “paint” software. He was born in Le Havre in 1980 but has lived in Montpellier for a long time. As a child, to get away from his chair he drew his toys, clothes among others. An international contemporary artist, his works are marked by an expressionist tendency. His favorite themes are vanity, love, money… He draws around an emotion that he tries to convey, more specifically on the difficulty of existing, despair and sorrow. He likes to transcribe the pixelated aspect he comes from a video game generation, as he describes it. Sensitive to Japanese culture, its beliefs and traditions, Ben Dante is inspired by this spirit to create his compositions. Not doing dark work, he represents hope in a society of despair that seems to be part of several currents including free figuration, geometric abstraction, minimalism.
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