Charles Benjamin / P for Everything
Curated by Samuel Leuenberger
12 September – 2 November, 2019.
SALTS @ Kunsthalle Lissabon
R. José Sobral Cid. 9E
1900-289, Lisboa
Portugal
Charles Benjamin featuring new paintings specifically devised for the gallery
space. P for Everything stages a set of oversized canvases that depict life on an
epic scale. From snapshots of a quiet interior life to aspirational hallmarks, the
paintings expand motifs to the level of larger than life protagonists: a still life,
an ethereal mobile, a calculator, a t shirt and pants, a house within a house,
parquet flooring, a lawn. Hyper minimalist and proto-naïve, the ochre line of
the oil stick presents viewers with a lodestar to guide them through the space.
In its oily tint, the paint is further redolent of the smeary logbook a mechanic
may use to keep track of ongoing work on their engine. The canvases may then
be viewed as a ledger, charting the shape and technicality of things in case one
should forget. Like the logbook, the canvases act as both index and record for
an ongoing process of material adjustment.
For Not Old Not New at SALTS in 2018, Benjamin had similarly installed a set of
awkwardly shaped canvases fitted to the dimensions of the space. Squeezed
into the subterranean space of Kunsthalle Lissabon, the canvases of P for
Everything take this conceit further: Benjamin has stretched the cloth of each
canvas downward over rickety feet. The effect brings to mind houses comically
perched on stilts, or hulking bodies vying for room. In doing so, the artist
deliberately avoids the preciousness bestowed on the genre of painting.
Following rough and ready methods and designed for quick disassembly, the
canvas stretcher was assembled in the exhibition space and the frames
produced from wood blanks sourced at a nearby wood trader.
With its focus on process rather than exalted objects, P for Everything sets the
temporal economy of painting front and centre, with the artist trading his works
for the equivalent of a month s rent, services, or otherwise leaving them at an
Autobahn rest stop for an impromptu pop up show hosted by friends. The
sparse canvases may thus be read as an extension of the artist’s daily activities,
rather than as, per a western canon of painting, a means of gilded storytelling.
This spiritual quest to free objects from longstanding traditions amounts to
something like savouring a minor poetics of the everyday.
P for Everything stands for everything an image can and wrestles to be.
Charles Benjamin (*1989, Stockholm, Sweden) is a painter based in Berlin. He
often uses his practice to explore personal problems, at once formally
documenting and making fun of economical hardship, spiritual depletion, and
disbelief in his own ability and the medium itself. His practice apart from
painting sometimes branches out in periodical projects such as living without
any basic comforts on a gallery floor for two weeks (Being a better person (And
Possibly Helping Others), 2016) or sitting under a tree for the time of an average
work ing week (Work/Work Balance, 2017). His work has been shown at New
Day Gallery and Mario Kreuzberg (both in Berlin), Espacio Falso (Santiago,
Chile), St. Etienne Design Bienale and SALTS (Switzerland).