55 Orchard Street, New York, New York 10002 212 989 5467
55 Orchard Street, New York, New York 10002 212 989 5467 |
Michelle Benoit: Residual Fiction |
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Michelle Benoit’s luminous sculptures, made from layered bulletproof Lucite colored with acrylic, draw from the artist’s experience of color as an evocation of memory, personal experience, and an acute sensitivity to the changing conditions of the natural world. Benoit likens her layering of color selections to a geologic core sample, with its distinct strata and variances. Benoit is interested in how color mixes, reflects and refracts with the addition of light. The transience of time is embodied in the works through their inherent capacity to change with varying light conditions. All but one of the sculptures in the exhibition are wall-mounted, some consisting only of Lucite. Here color passages travel and modulate, changing in the light as the viewer moves around the rectilinear, banded forms. Despite their solidity, sections can appear translucent and then opaque, solid, then weightless. Most of the works in the exhibition include hardwood plywood. Benoit contrasts the linear, patterned striations and soft earth tones of the natural wood surface with the hardness of man-made Lucite. Sections of both wood and Lucite are cut, layered, and laminated, then carefully sanded into curvilinear, organic shapes. The contrasting materials imbue the work with a nearly irresistible tactile quality with smooth, rounded surfaces and glowing light. In some works, hard edges have been rounded and softened, and the backing wood material has been brought forward. As Benoit notes: “This rounding of the peripheries pulls the history forward to the face of the work, allowing the past to become more present. In a way, this is a manifestation of the invisible for me, to see time all at once in an existent art object.” Michelle Benoit received a BFA from Rhode Island College and an MA and MFA from the University of Iowa. While there she interned at the State Office of the Archeologist in Iowa City. Benoit’s work has been exhibition nationally and internationally in museums and galleries since 1995. Her work is in numerous private and corporate collections, and has been reviewed in Two Coats of Paint, Dart International, Artscope, Patron, and the Philadelphia Inquirer, among others. | |||||||
55 Orchard Street, New York, New York 10002 212 989 5467
email info@mckenziefineart.com |
