Galleria Suzy Shammah

Carlo Benvenuto

I Came To Hear The Music
14 May - 28 Jun. 2008

Untitled, 2008
c-print mounted on aluminum
186 x 151 cm

"Isolating myself at home is a choice and, at the same time, a non-choice. It is a choice for poetic reasons, and a non-choice because I see it as the zero degree of the subject, the minimum threshold, the borderline between doing and not doing. I zeroed the subject and restart from myself."

The poetry of Carlo Benvenuto (1966, Stresa) reflects the desire to communicate as little as possible. The artist works in his own home with his own objects thus reducing individual choices to a minimum. He photographs what is available at a scale of 1:1 against a neutral background and in a rarefied atmosphere of delicacy and suspense. The absence of surrounding elements transforms common things into mystery: a teacup on the edge of a table, an electric guitar, all enveloped in a soft light of undeniable pictorial quality.The banal, almost catalogue-like framing refutes any expressive intentions. This minimal approach is pursued with research that borders on perfection. In the artist's modus operandi, form and composition, together with a skilful blend of light and colour, play a fundamental role, revealing his admiration for the great painters. His compositions of such sheer beauty calmly and wittily point to the order we attempt to establish within chaos.