Julia Benjamin “Some Paintings”

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Julia Benjamin is a painter who doesn’t like attaching words to her pictures. The language doesn’t matter to her. She’s not sure about others doing it either but is open to it. Afterall, it is tradition to offer viewers a few useful insights to the dense landscape of concepts and aesthetics that is contemporary art. As the gallerists we are welcome and encouraged to talk about it of course, so I will now tell you what we see.

We see a great unmaking, a collection of parts that want to resist forming a whole. Some things, arranged. A calculated dissonance, challenged by uniformity and a concise vocabulary. We see brush strokes that look like finger swipes. An easy rhythm is punctuated by an assertive but necessary structure. A logic so elusive the artist herself cannot define it, and therefore must trust the instinct that originally put a brush in her hand.

We don’t expect artists we work with to always know why they did it, nor to be able to pinpoint every branch in the decision tree leading up to their creations. Much of the time we have to unpack our own feelings on the work, and seek a similar trust in instinct in order to buffer expectations while a supporting language is formed. Some people don’t want to just make paintings about things. Sometimes the paintings are about not being about anything. Sometimes they are about withholding: you can ask questions but they don’t have to answer. Artists can reserve that right, and for that we are all fortunate.