steve dibenedetto's got a drawing show up at derek eller. the opening is this thursday (10-10) 6-8.
I gotta say, Steve always seems to put the information to good use. Very familliar and a high degree of articulation.
i got that card in the mail today / anex to yat?
Gee, thanks for maintainencing (sp.?) my little activity guys. Looks like we're shooting for after opening thing with Alex Ross (show at Feature same night) at Westside bar, 360 w 23rd in some ill-lookin down stairs rm. with D.J. booth! Not 100% definite so we'll see.--SDB
Wait, are you going to be dj?
dont let it hinge on that jim.
linda call me cell when you know, i s/b free arround 10
I will be going to this tonight w/ my brother and possibly my friend lucy. grabbing a bite inbetween opening and drinx. aw ? linda ? anyone ?
i was planning on getting to the opening around 7/7:30, but if you want to get a bite earlier let me know. i'm leaving the museum at 4 today, but need to go back to brooklyn first.
does anyone have today's times? i was told there is a review of steve's show in today's paper and i'm having trouble searching for it online...must have something to do with the 8 candy bars i ate today...need to lie down. is chocolate composte-able?
The Voice (barely) reviews Steve's show. I don't get much out of Jerry Saltz's criticism, but I suspect that if Terrence McKenna had the art school cache of deconstruction or gender studies JS wouldn't find Steve's paintings so baffling. Typical of the current school of criticism which is mostly interested in finding work that reinforces its own preconceptions of what art ought to be about.
The New Yorker blurb:
Dazzling color pencil drawings that look like illustrations of
rapture and pulse with the visual equivalent of reverb. At
times the recurring images—octopuses, helicopters, Ferris
wheels—suggest black-light posters for alchemists (see
Anastasius Kircher's maps of the subterranean earth). But the
centrifugal compositions have a formal complexity that takes
them beyond the merely psychedelic. The spinning wheels
and chopper blades call to mind the halos and angels in
Giotto's "Lamentation”.
from Friday's Times,
Steve DiBenedetto
Steve DiBenedetto, whose hideously beautiful, semiabstract painting has taken a quantum leap forward with each successive exhibition, here presents a new series of colored pencil drawings, adding ann exciting new chapter to his evolution.
Even more so than his paintings, Mr. Dibenedetto's drawings have an eccentric, Outsideresque quality. Imagine a Vietnam War veteran with a history of psychedelic drug consumption who finds in drawing a way to exorcise his demons. That's the impression conveyed by Mr. DiBenedetto's seemingly obsessive patterning around recurring images of helicopters and octopuses. Viewed from a distance, the drawings have and episodic structure that calls to mind comic book illustration, and the surfaces have the jewel-like luminosity of medieval manuscript illumination.
Up close, one finds that the artist has constructed these surfaces with intense care, each different area given it's own distinctively inventive application of mark-making and richly layered color. It is gratifying just to pore over this continually surprising topography. In places it looks like randomly improvised doodling, but often the patterning supports the overall picture.
Made with carefully inscribed short marks, the shimmering pie sections of a large disc represent the high-speed revolutions of helicopter rotors; zebra-stripe patterning in the sky suggests screaming noise' tiny gnarly marks swarm over the skin of a red octopus. All of this serves to energize the larger vision - a war between the reptilian id and the technorational ego. Call it "Apocalypse Now."
KEN JOHNSON
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- linda 10-07-2002 10:18 pm
I gotta say, Steve always seems to put the information to good use. Very familliar and a high degree of articulation.
- steve 10-08-2002 12:49 am [add a comment]
i got that card in the mail today / anex to yat?
- bill 10-08-2002 2:49 am [add a comment]
Gee, thanks for maintainencing (sp.?) my little activity guys. Looks like we're shooting for after opening thing with Alex Ross (show at Feature same night) at Westside bar, 360 w 23rd in some ill-lookin down stairs rm. with D.J. booth! Not 100% definite so we'll see.--SDB
- steve db 10-08-2002 8:22 am [add a comment]
Wait, are you going to be dj?
- jim 10-08-2002 5:30 pm [add a comment]
dont let it hinge on that jim.
- bill 10-08-2002 6:40 pm [add a comment]
linda call me cell when you know, i s/b free arround 10
- Skinny 10-10-2002 4:27 pm [add a comment]
I will be going to this tonight w/ my brother and possibly my friend lucy. grabbing a bite inbetween opening and drinx. aw ? linda ? anyone ?
- bill 10-10-2002 5:27 pm [add a comment]
i was planning on getting to the opening around 7/7:30, but if you want to get a bite earlier let me know. i'm leaving the museum at 4 today, but need to go back to brooklyn first.
- linda 10-10-2002 8:11 pm [add a comment]
does anyone have today's times? i was told there is a review of steve's show in today's paper and i'm having trouble searching for it online...must have something to do with the 8 candy bars i ate today...need to lie down. is chocolate composte-able?
- linda 11-02-2002 7:16 am [add a comment]
Sure it is, you're composting it now.
Speaking of composte, Dibenedetto's review doesn't seem to be available online.
- steve 11-02-2002 6:50 pm [add a comment]
The Voice (barely) reviews Steve's show. I don't get much out of Jerry Saltz's criticism, but I suspect that if Terrence McKenna had the art school cache of deconstruction or gender studies JS wouldn't find Steve's paintings so baffling. Typical of the current school of criticism which is mostly interested in finding work that reinforces its own preconceptions of what art ought to be about.
- alex 11-07-2002 12:15 am [add a comment]
The New Yorker blurb:
- alex 11-07-2002 6:04 am [add a comment]
from Friday's Times,
Steve DiBenedetto
Steve DiBenedetto, whose hideously beautiful, semiabstract painting has taken a quantum leap forward with each successive exhibition, here presents a new series of colored pencil drawings, adding ann exciting new chapter to his evolution.
Even more so than his paintings, Mr. Dibenedetto's drawings have an eccentric, Outsideresque quality. Imagine a Vietnam War veteran with a history of psychedelic drug consumption who finds in drawing a way to exorcise his demons. That's the impression conveyed by Mr. DiBenedetto's seemingly obsessive patterning around recurring images of helicopters and octopuses. Viewed from a distance, the drawings have and episodic structure that calls to mind comic book illustration, and the surfaces have the jewel-like luminosity of medieval manuscript illumination.
Up close, one finds that the artist has constructed these surfaces with intense care, each different area given it's own distinctively inventive application of mark-making and richly layered color. It is gratifying just to pore over this continually surprising topography. In places it looks like randomly improvised doodling, but often the patterning supports the overall picture.
Made with carefully inscribed short marks, the shimmering pie sections of a large disc represent the high-speed revolutions of helicopter rotors; zebra-stripe patterning in the sky suggests screaming noise' tiny gnarly marks swarm over the skin of a red octopus. All of this serves to energize the larger vision - a war between the reptilian id and the technorational ego. Call it "Apocalypse Now."
KEN JOHNSON
- steve 11-07-2002 8:23 am [add a comment]