Born in Grenoble, in 1964, Carole Benzaken lives and works in Paris.
A graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, Carole Benzaken entered the artistic scene with a noteworthy show at the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain in 1994.
A winner of the Prix Marcel Duchamp in 2004, she presented the exhibition Search for the New Land at the Centre Pompidou's Espace 315. Carole Benzaken's work has been the object of many solo shows, including the monographic exhibition at the Musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaisme in Paris, in 2011 ; at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nancy, in the spring of 2014; and at the BWA Contemporary Art Gallery in Katowice, Poland, in the fall of 2015. More recently, she was also given a solo exhibition at the prestigious Carré Sainte-Anne in Montpellier, France; at the Museum Slaskie in Katowice, Poland, in 2016; and at the Musée de Louviers, France, in 2017. In 2019, she benefits from solo shows at the Abbaye of Cluny - invited by the Centre des Monuments Nationaux (CMN), and at the Château of Tournon in Tournon-sur-Rhône.
Her work was included in several important exhibitions held at prestigious institutions, including Invitation au Voyage - 15 ans du Prix Marcel Duchamp in 2015 at La Centrale (Belgium); Miss Dior in 2015 (Beijing, China); Une spiritualité au féminin in 2013 at the Musée d'Art Sacré (Dijon, Musée du Hiéron, Paray-le Monial, France); Palmiers, palmes et palmettes in 2013 at the Musée Masséna (Nice, France); Elles@centrepompidou in 2009 at the Centre Pompidou (Paris, France); Contemporary Cool and Collected in 2007 at the Mint Museum of Art (Charlotte, NC, USA); Eye on Europe : Prints, Books and Multiples, 1960 to Now in 2007 at the MoMA (New York, NY, USA).
Carole Benzaken's work is held in prestigious public and private collections, including the Royal Academy of Arts (London, UK), the Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA), the Musée d'Art Contemporain du Val de Marne (MAC VAL-Vitry, France), the Fonds Régional d'Art Contemporain (Alsace, France), the Musée national d'art moderne-Centre Pompidou (Paris, France), the Fonds National d'Art Contemporain (France), the Fonds Régional d'Art Contemporain (Midi-Pyrénées, France), the Fondation Cartier (Paris, France), the Fonds Régional d'Art Contemporain d'Ile de France (France), the Fonds Régional d'Art Contemporain (Auvergne, France), and the collection of the Fondation LVMH (France).
She was also commissioned to make several public art works, including a tapestry for the Mobilier National in 1998; stained-glass windows for the Eglise Saint-Sulpice in Varennes- Jarcy in 1997-2001; and a monumental, backlit and programmed glass polyptych for the hall of 32, rue Blanche, in Paris.
Carole Benzaken received many prizes and distinctions, including the Prix Albert Rocheron in 1991, the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 1998, then that of Officier des Arts et des Lettres in 2008, and Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur in 2011.
Carole Benzaken has been represented by la Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris/Brussels, since 1993.
In her nearly thirty years of rummaging through image feeds in search of snapshots, Carole Benzaken has methodically developed a polysemous and homogenous body of work, while also allowing heterogeneous ramifications to form. The artist questions the sheer profusion and speed at which these images constantly assault us, provoking a feeling of satiation, despite a visual multiplicity that is never quenched.
Carole Benzaken develops a pictorial work that challenges the status of the image, as well as its representation and perception both in the space of the painting and outside it. She never ceases to surprise the viewer by constantly taking new approaches to the use of new media and techniques make use of three-dimensional space. On this occasion Carole Benzaken is presenting works on the boundary between figuration and abstraction, in which a rhizomatic proliferation impinges upon different media by decomposing and recomposing the figure of the tree. Ramifications rather than arborescences multiply and overflow on different supports.
From now on, she faces architecture. Using different media, from the painting to the video, through the techniques of laminated glass, Carole Benzaken blurs the fields, mixing in a skilful montage the multiple codes of the image and its modes of perception.