Benedicte Gele

Very early in Bénédicte Gelé’s life, the horse is omnipresent without being obvious. Without equestrian heredity, she was born in 1975 and lives in the Paris suburbs, the animal remains flat on magazines or far at the bottom of a meadow. However, a fascination, an inexplicable attraction pushes Bénédicte Gelé to multiply and force encounters with the animal. After an Applied Arts Bac and a BTS in Visual Communication, she became a graphic designer and then artistic director, fell in love with a lively and clever little mare and logically drew horses. In 2004, his equestrian and professional career seems to blend into each other, inseparable, with the horse as the keystone. Benedicte Gelé is attracted as much by the animal as by the line. In one, this living body, moving, behind its round forms, reminds her of the nude work of her school years. A body in its simplest expression, raw, like the pencil line, the artist’s base, grey or black, pure and strong.

"I do not paint for the myth of the animal or its legends, its strength or power, which I respect and do not deny. No, I think I paint carnal, sensual, a wave of primary emotion that the body reflects. It could have been a man or a woman, but the horse has this more animal side, more raw in these attitudes than the human who tends to intellectualize too much, a strong presence by its natural, captivating mass. »