David Boeno

Born in 1955 in Brest (France), il vit et travaille à Paris.

David Boeno began his career as a press photographer. In the early 1980s he started producing his own, more personal work in parallel. Fascinated by Ancient Greece, he began researching manuscripts in libraries, photographing and copying “ancient writings, words and sentences on the subject of images” found in texts by Ancient Greek philosophers and mathematicians, in the Bible and in 18th-century treatises on optics. Indeed, Boeno describes himself as a “Neo-Platonic photographer and copyist.” His multimedia work on the themes of colour and light make him an artist who is as poetic as he is conceptual. He also sets great store by transmitting his knowledge, which is why he also intervenes in schools.

In Toulouse, David Boeno is presenting a series of historic texts, each in an individual work: Epée (Sword), concerning a close call experienced by Louis XIV; Salaire (Salary), a floor projection of one of Herodotus’ “Histories,” and Colonne (Column), a sentence about the construction of the lighthouse at Alexandria. His reflection on history has the form of an ellipse – the form we observe when viewing a circle in perspective.