Famed for his white-on-black written paintings, his installations and his performance pieces, Benjamin Vautier - known as Ben - (1935-2024) was part of the postmodern avant-garde. Close to the Lettrisme movement, he was also one of the main founders of the Fluxus group. The cultivation of his own ego is an essential and recurrent theme in his work, which reflects, with a degree of light-hearted irony, the complex status of the artist with respect to today’s world and the demands it makes on us. His work, which both reflects upon the most fun- damental aspects of art and embraces the most particular details of daily life, makes life itself into an art form.

Painted in white on a black background and set into the wall of Polygone Riviera, two new meticulously handwritten phrases by Ben “L’art nous échappe” [Art escapes us] and “Réinventer le monde” [Reinventing the world] convey ideas that are simple and playful, but which subsume a more powerful concept: that of an art of ideas which opens the way to limitless discussion. Ben’s thoughts, written down in this way and placed on public display, are home truths, comments on the world and current affairs, scenarios, invectives, or simple observations. Here, the phrase replaces and becomes the image, reflecting both personal thoughts and the collective unconscious.