If the artist’s title wasn’t clearly printed on the wall labels, I’d have thought that Luis Fernando Benedit: Invisible Labyrinths on the Institute for Research on Latin American Artwork (ISLAA) was two separate exhibitions. The late Argentine artist’s first main exhibition in New York since a 1972 present on the Museum of Trendy Artwork begins with a room of vibrant Pop Artwork-esque work earlier than opening to a conceptual world of bioart habitats.
Impressed by the worldwide Pop Artwork scene, Benedit additionally developed an curiosity in out of doors areas, biology, and ecology after receiving his diploma in structure from the College of Buenos Aires in 1963. Though the present spans simply 1966 to 1972, it’s an important interval in Benedit’s apply, leading to what would possibly seem like a whole break from one physique of labor to a different. However whereas the work (courting 1966–68) and habitats for vegetation, bugs, and different small animals (1968–1972, all unoccupied right here) might look unconnected, the previous trace on the latter.
Luis Fernando Benedit, “Vegetal Architecture 5” (1966)
The work’ globular types appear to fluctuate between organisms and objects. The title of considered one of these works, “Vegetal Architecture 5” (1966), gestures to this dichotomy of the pure and human-made, which the artist would later query. The picture itself conflates the 2, its soft-edged geometric shapes lined with rounded enamel or cogs, and what might be a golf membership and ball on the heart.
By the next yr, Benedit’s work had grow to be extra cartoon-like and representational, bluntly rendered in flat, stable colours. In works corresponding to “Rabbit Cacciatore” (1967), nebulous types have morphed into grotesque allusions to organic experiments: A rabbit and one other animal appear to be turned inside out. It’s unclear whether or not they’re torture victims or Frankenstein’s monsters, however both approach, that is no pastoral scene.
That very same yr, Benedit studied panorama design on a fellowship in Rome, the place he met artist Jannis Kounellis, who had exhibited dwell animals in a gallery. In 1968, Benedit was amongst a gaggle of artists who co-founded the Centro de Arte y Comunicación, a Buenos Aires-based arts group centered on techniques artwork and cybernetics.
Luis Fernando Benedit, “Rabbit Cacciatore” (1967)
The bioart habitats that anchor the exhibition’s second half tread a philosophical line between artwork and science by elevating points — then prescient, now urgent — about surveillance and management, however prioritizing questions over solutions.
Clear environments for small life types in numerous sizes and shapes — from easy cylinders to buildings related with tubes and pathways — recommend the finding out and shaping of nonhuman habits. However with no standardized habitat, what would we be observing?
If techniques artwork creatively explores how techniques come up by way of relationships, the query of “nature versus culture” is at all times implicit. Benedit’s habitats eerily mirror human environments, from the micro to the macro, the place sociopolitical and socioeconomic cultural situations power the phantasm of standardization as a pure state when the identical situations additionally foster radical distinction.
Luis Fernando Benedit, “Anthill to Be Filled with Fire Ants” (1968)
The habitats are accompanied by detailed architectural drawings of others, each realized and unrealized, together with archival pictures, paperwork, and the title work, Benedit’s solely human habitat. Composed of motion-sensor lights and mirrors mounted on tripods, all surrounding a field on a platform, “Invisible Labyrinth” (1970) invitations guests to enter the set up and method the field. Navigate the sunshine beams incorrectly, although, and an alarm will sound (because it did for me); comply with them accurately, and also you’ve realized the foundations of the system.
It’s value noting that Benedit created his work towards a backdrop of violent dictatorships and political upheaval in Argentina. In the perfect of occasions, Invisible Labyrinths could be a captivating thought experiment, however right this moment, as in its historic second, it lays naked the realities of world-building in its many shades of chaos and management.
Luis Fernando Benedit, (high) “Multiple Prototype: Fish Tank for Tropical Fish” (1971); (backside) “Labyrinth for Ants” (1972)
Luis Fernando Benedit, “Labyrinth for Ants” (1968–70)
Luis Fernando Benedit, sketch for a habitat (c. 1970)
Luis Fernando Benedit: Invisible Labyrinths continues on the Institute for Research on Latin American Artwork (142 Franklin Avenue, Decrease East Aspect, Manhattan) by way of April 5. The exhibition was curated by Laura Hakel, Bernardo Mosqueira, and Olivia Casa.
