Mario Benjamin Exhibition at Maison Revue Noire, Paris

Mario Benjamin, described as the least Haitian of Haitian artists, has built a psychotic oeuvre over nearly 30 years centered on the cataclysms of the self. His work, characterized as an illumination of governing ghosts, moves from darkrooms to strongrooms, from houses to clinics, in a voluntary exile within his own Caribbean prison. The secret monograph from Revue Noire editions highlights the irreducible nature of this black diamond. Like British-Grenadian video artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen, who focuses on the limit-breathing of bodies, Benjamin claims the same famished hallucination of blood and bruises as in the film Hunger. Setting aside his recent spectacular installations, the Caribbean artist now paints phosphorescent canvases of false irradiated self-portraits where the figure disintegrates into an outline of bloody traits, where skin molts into yellow fireflies under the power of an absent soul consumed by the world's schizophrenia. The exhibition runs from November 14, 2012 to February 23, 2012 at Maison Revue Noire in Paris. A bilingual book titled "La Chambre de Mario Benjamin" accompanies the exhibition, published by Revue Noire with texts by J.L. Pivin, P. Martin Saint Leon, and S. Njami.