This contemporary artwork features a snow globe-like object with a pink and white color scheme. The main element within the glass dome is a small lighter, which stands out against the swirling glitter and snow-like particles. The composition is simple, yet visually striking, with the rounded shape of the dome and the minimalist base creating a clean, geometric aesthetic. The artist's choice of incorporating a mundane, everyday object like a lighter within this whimsical, snow-filled sphere suggests a playful and ironic commentary on consumerism or the ephemeral nature of modern life. The artwork exemplifies a modern, conceptual approach to art-making that challenges traditional notions of sculpture and everyday objects. ...
Benoît Piéron (b. Ivry-sur-Seine, 1983) was born with meningitis, and treated for leukaemia as a kid. In the 1970s and 1980s, 4,689 people with haemophilia and other bleeding disorders were infected with HIV and hepatitis viruses through the use of contaminated clotting factors – Piéron was one of these people, and whilst he did not become seropositive, his body became more political.
Four years ago, he returned to the hospital with a cancer. Upon reliving his childhood trauma, he realised that his works are intimately linked to his survival of HIV/AIDS. Through his practice, the guilt he experiences as one of a few survivors is transformed into something generative – a compostable energy that through practices of care and attention renews material detritus into forms that carry the voices, secretions and powers of others.
When his last cancer went into remission, he began assembling hospital-reformed sheets, with the help of a phenomenologist friend, materialised into toys, beach mats, flags, gymnastics ribbons, floor lamps and armchairs. The colours are softened by the intensive washing the sheets were subjected to. In spite of this hygienic treatment, "clean stains", the indelible traces of previous uses remain.
Piéron seeks to produce alternative expressions of the disease, instead exploring it as a site of potential. Far from the romantic heroism of the usual metaphors of illness, Piéron places himself in a grey and joyful zone. ...
