On May 10th, our friends at CASS Contemporary Art Space & Studio in Tampa will be presenting The Great Silence of These Distances, a debut solo showcase by Pablo Benzo. For this showcase, the Chilean-born and Berlin-based artist prepared a new body of work consisting of 10 oil paintings and 5 smaller works on paper, continuing his exploration of the still life format through cubist or even abstract aesthetics.
“In every distance, there's a certain kind of silence which has to do with the loneliness,” the artist explained to us about the poetic title and elaborated, “it can be the distance between people or between the moment when a painting starts being painted and the last moments of the process.” Seeing his work, not as a literal depiction of reality, Benzo likes to title his work and exhibitions in a way that represents that abstraction.
Loosely approaching perspective and dimension, Benzo is able to create the most impossible arrangements of unreal plants and odd vases and interior objects. Primarily focusing on composition and the ways to render their velvety surface, the artist is playing with gradients often reaching for oversaturated hues of a certain color. Contrasted against dim and neutral backgrounds, these compositions gain prominence while creating an atmosphere of freedom or confusion. In his newest body of work, the artist is attributing almost human characteristics and elements to his objects, as well as adding a more expressive painterly approach through brush stroke-rich patterns. The show also includes the smaller works on paper from zoom series which are focused on a singular detail of his larger compositions, allowing him to work in a more abstract manner.
“Don't ask me why, but I followed three paths in this exhibition,” Benzo told Juxtapoz. "The first one is the series of small paintings and medium pieces in which the image seems to be a crop of a bigger piece. I like how this image acquires a whole new dimension. The second series is more about technique, a series of 3 paintings I did with an extensor and painting far from the piece. The last one is a normal way of trying to capture the philosophy (if there is such thing) in the arrangement of objects in any place filled with an assortment of random elements. I like to think of these compositions like sculptures.” ––Sasha Bogojev
