Work
Beninati's paintings and drawings often seem to lack subject and order: through the use of stratification, he seeks a non-hierarchical balance in which all the objects are portrayed on the same plane. Be it a household interior or an imaginary landscape, every sort of setting has the same value and becomes a chance to seek new order. Thanks to his fluid brushstrokes, the artist plays with color gradations and glazes to recreate a rarefied, and sometimes unreal, atmosphere, describing figures that seem to slowly emerge from an often dreamlike, imaginary background. Beninati's pictorial production is intrinsically bound to installations that appear to be deserted sets, spaces that are often inaccessible and that the viewer can only observe through cracks or darkened glass (Venice Biennale 2005, XV Quadriennale of Rome 2008), soliciting a sort of voyeurism which violates the private sphere and the indefiniteness of memory. The artist works elaborate, through drawings, oil colours and installations, fragments of an inner world, with literary and artistic references. Beninati is part of the younger generation of painters, and he makes pictures in a style that plugs right into the international contemporary aesthetic. He is the kind of artist who a lot of younger people could identify with. His paintings are loose and washy figurative dreamscapes that make the viewer feel as if there’s a thick gauze on the surface of the painting and a story book world floating behind it.
In Beninati’s uncanny vision, natural elements penetrate interior spaces in lyric images that transport the viewer into new aesthetic terrain. The artist’s sensitive use of the materials fosters the visual ease essential to those who experience his ephemeral images. These works elicit a fantasy world where man-made places are combined with natural forms, to provide an escape into an arena of sensuous harmony.
The otherworldly nature of this Sicilian artist's soft focus dreamscapes is reminiscent of a childhood of fairytales. Beninati's figurative works reflect a state of innocence that exists behind the subtlety of pastels and candy colours. His paintings depicting children surrounded by flora and fauna seen through layers of light and softly applied colour have been described as "somewhere between Bosch, Renoir and Thomas Kinkead".
The work of this prolific (and skilful) painter orbits around memories of childhood and adolescence. The images are dreamy, sometimes verging on nightmarish, with some details rendered with great precision while others are left out of focus, seemingly smudged out. This is a quality both dreams and memories have in common and it is one which is pleasant and worrying at the same time - it gives these works a certain magnetism.
Read more about this topic: Manfredi Beninati
Famous quotes containing the word work:
“Our kids will develop a work ethic only if we require them to pay a portion of the cost of some of the things they want. They’ll learn to defer gratification the moment we stop routinely pulling out our wallets. And they’ll learn self-discipline only if we care enough to enforce reasonable limits.”
—Fred G. Gosman (20th century)
“The beaux and the babies, the servant troubles, and the social aspirations of the other girls seemed to me superficial. My work did not. I was professional. I could earn my own money, or I could be fired if I were inefficient. It was something to get your teeth into. It was living.”
—Edna Woolman Chase (1877–1957)
“You seem to have no real purpose in life and won’t realize at the age of twenty-two that for a man life means work, and hard work if you mean to succeed.”
—Jennie Jerome Churchill (1854–1921)