Kerstin Flake / Benoît Grimbert
Duo show curated by Michael Mauracher & Peter Schreiner, Fotohof, Salzburg, 2024
With the support of Institut Français


Horse Latitudes project

Exhibition views: Andrew Phelps/Fotohof
The exhibition “Kerstin Flake / Benoît Grimbert”, brings together two international positions whose intellectual affinity is perhaps only apparent at second glance. Kerstin Flake stages bizarre plays as director and stage designer in one person. While the laws of physics only seem to apply to a limited extent in her picture series, Benoît Grimbert’s precise photographs resemble an almost archaeological investigation of urban spaces. In his works, he forges links between the places depicted and the biographies of iconic personalities such as Ian Curtis, Nico, Jim Morrison and Charles Manson, thus confusing temporal layers. The result is a conglomerate of pop culture myths and the history of photography, which seems to evoke inner images and at the same time deconstruct them. […]
Benoît Grimbert […] focuses on urban scenes as stages for multi-layered historical processes and narratives. By means of precisely composed, documentary-like photographs, he not only conducts a precise, visual investigation of built spaces and landscapes in his works, but also embarks on a search for clues that is as metaphysical as it is criminalistic. In his most recent work, “Horse Latitudes” (2014-2023), Jim Morrison’s and Charles Manson’s legendarily linked biographies become the pivotal points of a narrative about a not-too-distant but highly mythical past that blends the results of his photographic explorations with historical text fragments and pop-cultural artifacts. The images that feed this narrative meander somewhere between documentary fact and spiritualist ghost photography. They show crime scenes whose dead have long since disappeared into the Hades of pop-cultural mythology and make use of a photographic language whose references are probably as iconic as the legendary protagonists that Benoît Grimbert seeks to approach artistically.




Exhibitions


What stands between us. Akademie der Künste, Berlin (EMOP Berlin)

2025


Los Angeles revisited (in dialogue with Hannah Darabi) JAP, Entre deux portes, Bruxelles

2025


Horse Latitudes [as part of “Kerstin Flake / Benoît Grimbert” duo show], Fotohof, Salzburg

2024


Atrocity Exhibition, Centre d’art Ygrec / ENSAPC, Aubervilliers

2023


Neuköln “Heroes”, Hôtel la Louisiane / PhotoSaintGermain, Paris

2022


Deux ou trois choses, B.P.I., Centre Pompidou, Paris

2022


Regards du Grand Paris, Magasins Généraux, Pantin

2022


Nuclear Winter, Librairie Mazarine, Paris

2018


Rock’n Roll, Fondation Fernet-Branca, Saint-Louis

2018


Faites vos jeux, 9th Gonesse Biennial of Contemporary Art, Pôle culturel de Coulange

2014



Stains, Archives nationales, Paris

2012


A406, North Circualr Road, ENSA Paris-Malaquais, Paris

2008


Normandie, Paysages de la Reconstruction, CRCO, Cherbourg-Octeville

2006