artist/ Capdevielle

France

Benjamin Capdevielle is a French artist born in Paris in 1977.

A graduate of MJM Graphic Design Paris, he began his career in photography before turning to painting.

In her studio on the Arcachon basin, the artist now combines painting and photography.

Influenced by Pop culture, Japanese Manga and Street Art, he creates unique works and perfects the stencil technique.

In recent years, he has become renowned for his highly colorful, modern paintings.

Benjamin’s figurative universe is populated by iconic characters drawn mainly from American comics and Japanese manga. Instead of the traditional all-powerful image that heroes reflect on us, they seem to struggle in a world filled with doubt, violence, war, greed and pornography.

Like the old masters of Pop Art and, more recently, Takashi Murakami, whose work inspires him greatly, Benjamin proposes a crude vision of reality through the recuperation of post-war symbols. Contaminated by what appears to be a modern “bug” (see the Mickey series), the characters engage in actions and behaviors they once fought against.

As a professional photographer, Benjamin knows perfectly how to structure and compose canvases, which he often cuts into diptychs or triptychs. Using a mix of aerosol paints, acrylics and collages, he depicts explosive, luminous, multi-layered scenes that often refer to urban art and elements of 20th-century popular culture.

His work draws on the collective memory of an entire generation.