Sculptor John Benvenuto Info - Sculpture.org

STRING THEORY: Spaces To Believe In

Artist’s Statement by John Benvenuto

An essence of my sculpture installations is to create an architecture, site-specific, that is seductive spatially in its shifting and destabilized boundaries. I want to give you spaces for your self to migrate into architecture, space, materiality. This series of works of illusionist interior spaces and sites is chameleon-like in its ability to reflect or embody visitors’ memory, fantasy, longing. In contemporary physics, string theory posits simultaneous galaxies, and searches for a unified explanation of forces. In my string-equivalence structures I evoke as many realms as there are visitors and provoke a union of body and space.

The polychrome masons line and light rope is a device to prompt visitors into acts of completion. I disrobe the opaque, de-materialize plank, plaster and brick to reveal the structures that we work and live in. By limning edge, plane or mass in string or rope and/or the skeletal wood framing —architecture and its materiality is stripped-down into essence, a state in which the viewer and his/her experience becomes the subject.

The string and rope exists on literal and metaphoric levels: proscenium curtain; lines of affinity; ties that bind; representing plane and mass; lines of stress/support. These lines suggest permeability and paths for transit. By opening-up mass, room is made for the visitor to move in(to).

What was floor, wall, ceiling can be entered and exited simultaneously. To provoke the rethinking of assumptions about living-in-space, I at times disarrange architecture: a wall becomes ‘floor,’ a ceiling functions as ‘wall.’ In my site-specific installations the interplay between gallery planes of wall/floor/ceiling and the sculptures’ planes offers further explorations of body and sensation in space. While disoriented at first, the visitor’s body and imagination will determinedly make a new sense of these spaces, creating personal sites of meaning and harmony. In the inhabitant/architect is the confluence of the architectural interior and self’s inner construction.

“Whatever we believe in, we create a space there.”

Montien Boonma, Thai sculptor

RESUME

SHOWS (partial listing)

South Carolina Governors School for the Arts and Humanities, Greenville, SC., String Theory: Mass Into Line, Plane." 2010 (solo)

Washington and Jefferson College, Washington PA., "String Theory: Closed Loops in Architecture," 2010

Art Academy of Cincinnati,Cincinnati, OH., Fringe Festival/Visual Fringe, 2009

Sinclair Community College,Dayton, OH., "String Theory: Line of Sight" 2008

South Bend Regional Museum of Art,South Bend, IN., "String Theory: Ostinado" 2008

Springfield Museum of Art, Springfield,OH., "Ohio Art League Spring Juried Exhibition," 2008

I-Park, East Haddam, CT., "Ziggurat Suture" (outdoor installation), 2007

The Carnegie, Covington, KY., “String Theory: Riff and Limn,” 2007

Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit, Detroit, MI., “All Media Exhibition,” 2007

Rosewood Gallery, Kettering, OH. “20^th Anniversary Invitational” 2007

Fitton Center for the Creative Arts, Hamilton, OH. (three-person) “String Theory: Transport” 2006

Springfield Museum of Art, Springfield, OH. (two-person), “String Theory: Spaces to Believe In” 2006

Newport Art Museum, Newport RI., “Ourchitecture,” 2005

Indianapolis Art Center, Indianapolis, IN. (two-person) “ReUse” upcoming June-August 2005

FE Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA., “Fear: Real or Imagined?,” 2005

Dayton Visual Artists Center, Dayton, OH. (three-person), “WorkArt” 2004

Stone Quarry Hill Art Park, Cazenovia, N.Y. outdoor installation: “Light and Landscape” July-October 2004

Gallery Beshart, Montclair, N.J., “Recent Works on Paper” 2004

SPACES, Cleveland, OH, installation: “Accretion Wall, an Inter-active Installation”, March, 2003

Roy G. BIV Gallery, Columbus, OH (two-person), “Recent Works” 2003

The Dairy Barn Art Center, Athens, OH, “Move It!” 2002

Three Rivers Arts Festival Juried Exhibition, Pittsburgh, PA, 2002

ARC Gallery “National Exhibition,” Chicago, IL, 2001

Rosewood Gallery, Dayton, OH (two-person), 2001

Hudson Walker Gallery, Provincetown, MA, 2000Touchstone Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1996

Popular Art Center, Ramallah, Occupied West Bank (solo), 1994

University of the District of Columbia, Installation: “Refugee Tent,” 1993

Old Ramallah Gallery, Ramallah, Occupied West Bank, (solo), 1988

Hudson Walker Gallery, Provincetown, Massachusetts (two-person), 1983

Twelve Sculptors Gallery, New York City, 1980

Amarillo Competition, Amarillo, Texas, 1977

Jonson Gallery, Albuquerque, New Mexico (solo), 1974

Museum of Albuquerque, Albuquerque, New Mexico, “Introductions ‘73" 1973

Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe, New Mexico,” New Mexico Fine Arts Biennial” 1973

Kravetz Gallery, Rochester, New York, 1971

University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama (solo), 1971

WORKS IN PRIVATE COLLECTIONS

U.S., Jordan, Palestine.

PUBLICATIONS

Book cover for We Have Gone to the Beach, by Cynthia Huntington. Maine: Alice James Press, 1996.

Book cover for Witnessing, by Carolyn Maisel. Colorado: L'Epervier Press, 1978.

Portfolio of work in Puerto del Sol, New Mexico, spring, 1974

FELLOWSHIPS

Montgomery County Arts & Cultural District visual Arts Fellowship, 2008

Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, 2007

Artists’ Enclave at I-Park, East Haddam, CT., 2007, Residency

Montgomery County Arts & Cultural District Visual Artist Fellowship , 2004

Stone Quarry Hill Art Park, Cazenovia, N.Y., 2004, Residency

Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1980, Residency

Hotchkiss Workshop Scholarship, 1971

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS

International Sculpture Center

Springfield Museum of Art

Ohio Arts Education Association