About

BIOGRAPHY
Benoît Singy discovered modern painting as a teenager and it was the Fri-Art contemporary art exhibition, organised in his home town in 1981, that determined his commitment to an artistic career.
He then divided his activities between architecture and artistic creation. Since the year 2000, he has actively collaborated with the APC gallery in Fribourg, Switzerland, developing projects and exhibitions in the spirit of conceptual art.
But a few years later, Benoît Singy returned to his youthful passion, painting, to devote himself to it professionally, while beginning new collaborations with international galleries. His works are already part of private collections.

ARTISTIC APPROACH
I’ve been immersed in art for so long. I like the idea of bathing or staying close to the crucible in which the ingredients of my work are constantly simmering. For me, that’s what being an artist is all about: constancy, presence and a heightened sensitivity to everything that happens, both in the physical world and in the world of emotions, feelings and revolts.
So the vibrations of light and the shapes they create, the places I work in, the seasons and the state of the world are of paramount importance. This sensitivity is honed by my interest in philosophy, science and art history, which, like everything else, I approach as an autodidact. I come up with my own interpretations, which feed my imagination, in the sense of my ability as a painter to form images in my mind.
There are milestones in the development of any artistic career. For me, the first was the solo exhibition “Nous sommes embarqués” in 2010. The APC gallery in Fribourg gave me the opportunity to create 6 immersive installations. This intense work was an opportunity to explore many conceptual avenues and, paradoxically, initiated a return to means of expression closer to painting, which today allow me to better develop my artistic research. A large-format work from 2021, “Le grand rouleau”, also plays an essential role in the orientation of my approach. It’s a charcoal drawing that resembles the act of writing, which unfolds like a scroll and is full of sequences and references. It’s a kind of mantra, a library in which I can find references ad infinitum, and like a piece of work, I can pick it up again at any time, without ever pastiche it. My favourite themes, those that simmer in the crucible of my creation, derive directly from these two events, such as time, temporality, duration, the trace, ghosts and the margin, which are the ingredients of mythological narratives.
Following in the footsteps of artists such as Velasquez, Rothko, Pollock or Soulage, I seek a form of transcendence that speaks directly to the soul of the viewer, a form of spirituality that is detached from all dogma and rationality and flourishes in the realm of sensitivity and intuition. This ambitious aim is in fact a response to the onslaught of technology in our intimate sphere. I am trying to express the richness of our deepest nature, whose inadequacy and approximation are the driving forces that compel us to constantly strive for excellence.