Benoit Huot

Born in 1966 in Montbéliard (France), Benoit Huot lives and works in Franche-Comté. Having graduated from the Beaux-Arts de Besançon (Besançon School of Fine Art) in 1989, he abandoned painting in the early 2000s to dedicate himself to a practice that oscillates between sculpture and installation. Fascinated by religious and non-Western art, the artist, in an atypical approach, dresses stuffed animals in velvet, bandages and jewels, creating a world both strange and mesmerizing. These metamorphosed animals, like fetishes or creatures with shamanic properties, evoke the rituals of Asia and South America. The stuffed animals are no longer hunting trophies, but real chimera, fabulous, imaginary monsters. Thus dressed, in the style of reliquaries, wild animals become sacred creatures, characters from fables or fairy tales. Strong visions, some of his works can arouse a strange feeling, between anxiety and enchantment.