Manfredi Beninati

Biography

"Art reveals mysteries concerning us as individuals and society, whilst philosophy explains why they are there. The moment that an artist turns philosopher (which happens often) then things don’t work anymore. ”

- Manfredi Beninati in Lowenna Waters' interview. The white review, 2011

After dropping out of both law and film school and collaborating with well-known Italian directors, Manfredi Beninati began working as an artist, devoting himself to drawing. He spent some time in Spain and England and, in 2002, when came back to Italy, he began to make sculptures and figurative paintings that drew directly on real or (often) imaginary childhood memories. Beninati first started studying law then switched to film courses in the early 1990s while working as an assistant director in the Italian film industry. In 1994 he moved to London where he started working as a visual artist. In 2005 he was selected as one of four artists to represent his country at the 51 Venice Biennale where he received the audience award for the Italian pavilion. In 2006 he was given a fellowship at the American Academy in Rome as part of the Rome Prize. He currently lives and works in Palermo, Rome and Los Angeles where, together with his wife Milena Muzquiz (of Los Super Elegantes) he has founded an experimental theatre group. He is represented by James Cohan Gallery in New York, Tomio Koyama in Tokyo and Galleria Lorcan O'Neill in Rome.

Beninati is also a patron of Italian cultural heritage, organizing exhibitions, workshops, seminars and producing publications on Italian talents, through a foundation he and his mother set up in the memory of his younger brother Flavio. Recent projects he has curated include a series of talks on Italian design and a workshop on architecture icon Aldo Rossi held by American architect Thomas Tsang in Hong Kong and Palermo.

Trivia

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.

"(...) Even so, some of the pieces I liked most are best seen at night. To view the installation by Italian Manfredi Beninati you have to look through a window punched through the wall of a derelict building in the city centre. Standing there in the cold and dark, you are confronted with a vision of complete human happiness — a brightly lit drawing room with comfortable sofa and chairs, carpets, books, flowers, and a view through the window onto a tropical sunset. Newspapers and toys, a dolls’ house, and the tools dad is using to build a toy theatre lie scattered on the floor. But just as you are taking all this in, something moves and for the first time you notice the sinister figure looking in at the scene from the other the direction.

It takes a split second to realise that what you are seeing is your own reflection in the mirror hanging on the back wall. Beninati neatly demonstrates what it must be like to be on the outside looking in - to see comfort, warmth, love, and security but not to be a part of it. Wonderful. (...)"

- Richard Dorment, The Daily Telegraph, 22 September 2008

Solo shows

Group shows

Collections

Awards and residencies

Writings