From May 24, 2013
to June 8, 2013

In 2013, the year in which Marseille became the European Capital of Culture, after the exhibition devoted to the designer Marc Held, the gallery continued to broaden the horizon of its programming. In the spring, the artist Ben (Ben Vautier) from Nice dressed the black walls of the gallery with his words.

Ben always has something to say. He doubts everything, and this incessant questioning sends us back to our own interrogations. A committed artist, his words are never empty.
By dint of repetition in form, Ben's writing has become iconic, a kind of ideogram that represents him alone and floats in the collective unconscious without barriers of any kind.

"I wanted to return to Marseille.
I had a very good memory of my exhibition at the Mac with Blistene and Philippe Vergne.
Because :
I don't know why but I breathe well in Marseille.
I was born in Naples, via Voméro.
Somewhere it is Marseille.
And then
For Marseille Cultural City 2013
I had something to say.
I was almost angry.
I had to look for it
In this famous "Marseille cultural city 2013
Its language the Occitan language
It was hardly if it was there to serve as sugar
To calm and hold the regional artists in their park.
So I thought
In Marseille
I will counter the Jacobin cultural centralism
With my paintings written in Marseillais and Occitan.
YES
But where in Marseille?
At Alexis Pentcheff's.
Because at Alexis Pentcheff's,
the specialist in Marseille of Provençal painting,
my paintings in Occitan will be
the natural continuation of the Provençal landscapes with the words that they lack. "