Wednesday, September 21, 2005

“Jim, the diagnosis is not at all good.”


I have finally managed to get my slides taken and scanned and have just finished a major update of my web site. The new work from 2005 is almost entirely based on radiographic photographs of microbes which I found in some coffee table biology books in a used book store at the end of last year. I was originally drawn to these images by the surprising similarity they had in form and colour to my previous paintings. Conceptually, microbes work for me in that I am interested in the idea of painting things that actually are invisible, along with the a strained metaphor that such frightening little beasties have for my personal analysis of contemporary society. I spent much of my time making these paintings asking myself if a visual representation of biological disease could somehow represent social disfunction. Seeing as I am entirely unscientific in character and interests in general I also wonder if the fearsome invisible world of bacterias and virus are much different than the witches and demons that made us sick before the Enlightenment of the 19th century.

So please take a look at the images and later punish me with harsh criticism as it makes me stronger.

www.jasonbenedict.com

6 comments:

Mr. Alex said...

So my favorite paintings are "Lymph Node" & "HIV (Sketch)", and "Plant" is one nice fucking drawing.

What were you going for visually, other than that it has a look similar to your earlier stuff? What sorts of problems do you perceive in the work or run into while making it?

Chad said...

I was drawn to "Apoptosis (Celular Suicide)", "Neurons", & "Lymph Node". I think the lighting had a lot to do with it, what with me not knowing what i was looking at originally. The color pallete in the Salmonella painting is pretty choice, i must say.

Mr. Alex is right about the plant drawing. I'm diggin on the cactus one too.

Were you working from colored imagery originally or were they your choices?

Pete said...

Depicting western civilization's various boogie-men is a tremendously fertile topic. There is no better exemplar for this than Goya's black paintings. I think painting about anxiety and fear is a great direction for you.

The violet to ochre shift in "Cavernous Spongy Bone" is your best and most nuanced use of color in these.
Even through the JPEGs, I can tell that the strongest thing about these paintings is the surface and application. For instance, in "Apoptosis (Celular Suicide)" how the cell cluster is meaty and the perimeter of the picture is thin and mottled.
These paintings compare favourably with contemporary photo-based painters that I like, such as Magnus Von Plessen. The thing is, I don't think you are a photo-based painter. I don't think the medical images can only carry your pictures so far, then you'll need more elbow room, more room to invent and essentialize. These pictures don't evidence the same kind of push-and-pull your "Forgotten Spaces" pictures did.
That said, you've struck upon some excellent source material and subject matter.

Ditto on the drawings. They're very strong.

Pete said...

Correction: "I don't think the medical images can carry you so far..." should read, "I think the medical images can carry you so far..."

Don J. said...

In response to the above questions:
1) I was particularly drawn to a peculiar luminousity that these images had that lended itself well to an obsession of mine with fantastical and artificial light in the objects that I paint. I have mostly found examples of this in astronomy but it also has to do with memories of moving globules of colour that haunted my walking nightmares as a kid . . . (more on that another time)
2) The main problems in this project is that I stayed overly faithful to the original images, limiting my opportunities for painterly interpretation and leaving me at something of a dead end as far as where to go from here conceptually (after scary EBOLA now what?)
3) The colours are from the radiographic photos for the most part though a tended to turn them up a notch.
4) I am hoping in my next series to be freer in my compositions but hold onto the focus that I found here. How the hell I will manage that is anyone's guess so far.

Ryan said...

well, what about pushing the connection between the structure of viruses and contagions to encompass something invisible like how "fear" can spread. if it were possible to draw fear and how it has spread throughout the u.s. since terrorists are now lurking behind every corner. (i read 1984 recently, good source of inspiration, for social fear tactics.)

you would have lots of examples and you could take as psueudo-scientific approach as you like remember artists don't have to stick to the same rules socialogists, anthropoligists, or pyschiatrists do.

alex do remember that class we took at SAIC (i think you were in my class, right?) the pschology of groups and institutions?

what a mindfcuk that class was!