Benoît Buquet

Benoît Buquet is an academic and lecturer at University of Tours in France. His centres of interest are the history, theory and criticism of contemporary art, exhibition practice, graphic design and visual culture. He is the author of numerous articles which have been published, among others, by Critique d’Art, 20/21 Siècles and Tombolo journals, and a book, Art & Design Graphique. Essai d’Histoire Visuelle, (Editions Pyramyd, 2015).

He was the curator of 5 Minutes after the Show (2013); Black Box (2014); Ce qui Reste sans Rester (2015) and Big Data (2016) for Galerie Expérimentale at the Centre de Création Contemporaine Olivier Debré (CCC OD) in Tours, and Stereo View. C. Delieutraz (2014) at 22,48 m² in Paris.

Built for Expo ‘70 in Ōsaka and designed by the artist Tarō Okamoto, the Tower of the Sun presents a menacing black sun on its back. Benoît Buquet’s study of this motif and other adjacent forms became the basis for a curatorial and editorial project titled Black Stars – 黒い天体.

The book format is envisaged as an exhibition space in its own right, capable of uniting fragments of “ruins of the future” and certain highly contemporary works. A sort of polyphonic logbook, it becomes a record of an archaeological dig and of an interstellar journey.