The series features a multifaceted exploration of different contents but also techniques. By associating insects with pop culture artefacts, Parisian artist Benjamin Pietri dusts off the world of entomology by creating contemporary cabinets of curiosities. Honet’s work adorns the contours, the backdrop of this universe of augmented taxidermy. The two boxes seem to come straight out of the drawers of a natural history museum: entomological pieces (associated by analogy of shapes or colors) are pinned to the background and seem to be in tune in a Space Baroque and colorful opera. A very rich and unique artistic repertory is brought along by Honet. The black and white backgrounds are enriched with esoteric symbols as well as entomological plates of a new kind. They serve as decorum in the midst of which exotic butterflies and Egyptian scarabs delicately land. There are so many different references that adorn his and Petri’s boxes of a strange and tangy universe, out of time, with no real border between the organic and the synthetic, between what frightens us and what reassures us.
In addition to the boxes, the series features three drawings on paper. Honet’s art works are always intended to be highly meaningful and therefore have several levels of reading in addition to his iconic illustrative aesthetic. All of those reading levels describe in a suggestive or more concealed way his universe, his secret worlds, graffiti life and its adventures.
Tania Di Brita