Jonathan Griffin

Criticism and essays on art and culture

Tag: michael benevento

June 22, 2016

Gina Beavers

Beavers 4_12

Gina Beavers, Memphis BBQ (looks like a Gina Beavers), 2013, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 40 cm. Courtesy: the artist and Michael Benevento, Los Angeles; photograph: Jeff McLane

Modelling the surface of a picture into a 3D relief, with contours that boost the image with real shadows and highlights, is a technique so crassly obvious that it is a wonder you don’t see it more often – not only in art but in visual culture in general. Why not, in order to snag the attention of easily distracted viewers, just make images that physically pop out from the wall? Read the rest of this entry »

September 29, 2011

Michael E. Smith

Michael Benevento, Los Angeles

Sometimes artists’ biographies become so central to the reception of their art that they threaten to overwhelm it entirely. Michael E. Smith’s association with the blighted post-Fordist city of Detroit has become almost impossible to separate from his tender but trashed sculptures, paintings, videos and installations.

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July 26, 2011

David Snyder

Michael Benevento, Los Angeles

‘That old defence – an inch deep smile and a suitcase out the back window.’ It’s a great line, and it comes halfway through David Snyder’s exhibition ‘Face Forward’. To give it a bit of context, we must step away from the CD player from which it emanates, back out through the doorway in the wooden façade that spans the middle of the space, past another CD player and another yammering voice, out the door of the gallery and onto the street.

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