EXPANDER
by JJ Charlesworth
Manfredi Beninati’s work explores the theme of life’s journey – a well-trodden path of art and literature which Beninati obscures with outbursts of paint. Figures are partially glimpsed at the edge of a forest, on a road, by the sea; they are in non-places that echo the internal weather of moods or the receding mists of memory. Like adolescence, the paintings are cocktails of anxiety and security, of clear figurative imagery overlaid with nonsensical, painterly noise. Often Beninati employs imagery as metaphor: boats, horses, bicycles and other means of transport signify movement through personal narrative rather than space. The theme of mother and child recurs, expanding on the religious connotations of Madonna and child to more contemporary, psychoanalytical interpretations. In actual fact, these paintings are all self portraits. Beninati is using paint as time travel, revisiting both atavistic atmospheres and layers of intimate recollection.
JJ Charlesworth in catalog of “Expander” exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, 2004
Copyright © 2004 JJ Charlesworth
