Benjamin Salesse
instagram @benyoyo
Thesis Exhibition
Artist Statement: I ask mother why she doesn’t paint or write anymore. Abruptly, she stops walking, turns to me, and replies that she doesn’t want to leave any trace when she leaves this world.
Those words make me think about the violence of erasure, alienation, the interruption of lineage. They make me think about their absurdity. The marks we leave during our existence — intentional or not, physical or otherwise — and how they relate to the photographic object.
“B. writes passionately about the violence done to the subjective experience by history, and about the concerted efforts by human beings to preserve experience in the face of this violence, as hundreds of millions of photographs, fragile images, often carried next to the heart or placed by the side of the bed are used to refer to that which historical time has no right to destroy.”
A photographic object that is molded and imprinted by the multiple forces at play in its making.
A photographic object that attempts to salvage, to revive, to preserve something on the verge of disappearance, but itself frail, mortal, and destined to disappear. A stay of execution.
A photographic object that doesn’t pretend to defy nature — encased in an air-tight, light- protected, gravity-defying enclosure — but “a living organism” in a transient state, that captures the beauty and tragedy of its condition.
Benjamin Salesse
TBC: And yet, here you are, 2024
Single-channel video, color, with sound, and metal structure
9 minutes
Thanks to Johanna Velasquez for their help; Courtesy of the artist
&
TBC: Melancholias, 2024
Photographs and metal rods
Courtesy of the artist
&
TBC: Peau de chagrin, 2024
Image transfer emulsion, and metal structure
Courtesy of the artist
First Year Exhibition
Benjamin Salesse
Sensible Archive #1-20
20 x photographs and found objects
Courtesy the artist
