Kristopher Benedict "Remake"
Sue Scott Gallery
This event has ended.
Sue Scott Gallery presents "Kristopher Benedict: Remake". This is the artist’s second solo exhibition at the gallery.
For this exhibition, Benedict revised images that are themselves revisions—the recycled subject matter of art history, remade films and jpegs culled from the Internet. A couple walking in the snow lifted from Vanilla Sky (itself, a remake), a brushy interpretation of Willard Metcalf’s 1904 Impressionist painting The Convalescent, a large scale rendition of Nicholas Cage’s foreclosed Hollywood mansion from a small image found on Google, an intimate landscape consisting entirely of abstract markings, are all based on a conceit of revision and reinterpretation that allows the artist to range freely across styles and themes.
A remake shares a certain continuity with its original yet marks a shift in subject matter that is initiated by the author. In a cultural climate that is informed by strategies of appropriation, creative branding and the transmission and consumption of images at lightning speed, Benedict’s subjective vision speaks ultimately to our meta-vocabularies and the transformative qualities inherent in the practice of painting. This perpetual building up and breaking down of worn and revisited images and sentiments is an apt analogy for the continued reinvention of the artist’s own practice. The exhibition Remake reflects a continuum of Benedict’s examination of representation in painting, memory, authorship and narrative. Even if what is being referenced does not immediately register, a familiar (if ineffable) feeling usually will. Benedict asks the viewer to look closer, not only to identify the source of that feeling, but to see how that feeling was achieved—to follow the decisions and transformations taking place and then double-back to find something entirely new in place of the initial impression.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog with an essay by Dushko Petrovich and an interview by Tom McGrath.
Kristopher Benedict was born in 1978 in Middletown, New York. He received his BFA from Cooper Union and his MFA from Columbia University.
[Image: Kristopher Benedict "Hermit Painting" (2011) Oil on canvas 64 x 84 in.]
Media
Schedule
from September 07, 2011 to October 23, 2011
Opening Reception on 2011-09-07 from 18:00 to 20:00