Front

To face something is to have no background left.

Front holds on a single plane, seen head-on, with no depth of field. There is nowhere else to look: everything that happens, happens on this plane.

A limit advances across it, as on a burning page: on one side, the intact paper; on the other, the ash, which keeps the shape of the page and is no longer one. Between the two, a line of fire that transforms everything it crosses. From one work to the next, what changes is the shape of this line: smooth, notched, branched.

The figure has been removed. What remains are the instruments: a colour chart, a ruler, the edge of a plate. What served to measure has entered what it was measuring.

Standing one’s ground, in the face of an illness: one does not choose what happens; one advances with it. Some wounds remain, others close, and this sorting gives its shape to what one becomes. What has passed does not return.

A front is not waiting to give away. It advances.

Wetting Front, 2026

Pigment print

Slab Avalanche, 2026

Pigment print

Somitogenesis, 2026

Pigment print

Necking, 2026

Pigment print

Glacier Surge, 2026

Pigment print

Grounding Line, 2026

Pigment print

Black Film, 2026

Pigment print

Squall Line, 2026

Pigment print

Cambium, 2026

Pigment print

Carbonation Depth, 2026

Pigment print

Devitrification, 2026

Pigment print

Cortical Reaction

Pigment print

Freezer Burn, 2026

Pigment print

Frontal Polymerization, 2026

Pigment print

The Conceptual Ground

A border separates two sides. A front separates two moments: on one side, what has not yet changed; on the other, what has. The line between them is the only place where anything happens, and it moves. What it has crossed stays transformed.

A front never advances perfectly straight. Small advances keep appearing along its line, as on the edge of water spilled on a table. Some fade at once; others keep pushing forward. The edge keeps the trace of this sorting. A smooth edge has erased all its advances; a branched edge has let them push on until they form branches. Between the two, a notched edge, not quite smooth, not yet branched. This is not the sign of an approaching break: it is how a front advances. From one work to the next, the series varies the shape of the edge.

There is no position from which to see the edge side-on: one always faces it. The instruments have entered the field, and what measured is now part of what is measured. No room is left for an observer outside.

A before and an after

The plane

The shape of the edge

In French, faire front, to stand one’s ground, is to hold: to stay exactly where something presses, without giving way and without withdrawing. It is not an equilibrium one reaches; it is a holding one keeps up while advancing. The word front also names, in physics, the surface where a transformation progresses: a flame front, a solidification front. It names the line where two forces meet and which moves: a battle front, a storm front. And it names a part of the face.

Standing one's ground

A front is not waiting to give away. It advances.

All works are unique pigment prints on Japanese paper, from images produced with generative AI models partly trained on the artist’s paintings and photographs, and reworked by hand.
Further information on request.

Enquiries : yanissbeni@protonmail.com

Hold the line.

Liminal Signal Degradation

Stationary Coexistence

A field where no border settles.

Two domains sharing the surface without merging.