Vit à : Lille , France
Graduated of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Dunkerque (2001) and member of the 11th curatorial training session at the Ecole du Magasin – Centre National d’Art Contemporain in Grenoble (2001/2002), Benoit Villain is artist and curator.
Curator for the artistic and cultural program at LaM, the Lille Métropole Musée d’art moderne d’art contemporain et d’art brut since 2008, he’s leading a reflection on the position of the performing arts in the museum environment. This work focuses on the perception and understanding of the contemporary nature of the work, and explores the dimensions of gesture and time in artistic processes. This research takes the form of cross-disciplinary projects that question the norms, the conventions and the protocols that govern exhibitions on the one hand and performance on the other.
He is co-president of 50° NORD – 3° EST Pôle arts visuels Hauts-de-France & territoires transfrontaliers and member of the Collectif Brûle Maison.
Since 2008, Benoit Villain has also been involved in new projects, redeveloping a personal artistic production that questions our relationship with history. Through his production of drawings, publications (digital and paper), installations and videos, his research questions the productivist dimension of contemporary art, particularly in the field of pictures. Every day, the artist contributes to producing pictures in the uninterrupted flow of all those that are produced. What sense does it make to produce images in a world that is increasingly saturated with them? What sense does it make to produce images when the space of visibility is literally submerged, making the life of images truly ephemeral? Drawn into constant circulation, images are becoming increasingly fleeting, antithetical to their destiny of crystallising a moment in history, whether individual or collective. So how do we reactivate the visibility and memory of an image?