Matthew Benedict at Alexander and Bonin - Brief Article

Five huge recent paintings from Matthew Benedict's ongoing saint series filled the largest room of the gallery. The effect was overpowering and slightly suffocating, like being in an old church when the incense gets too thick. Each saint is painted in flat slabs of muted browns and grays on paper, and framed in heavy wood. Stylistically they are difficult to locate, resembling Spanish and Latin American second-tier religious art, and incorporating aspects of Manet, 18th-century handmade wallpaper, children's book illustrations, as well as certain `90s underground cartoonists, such as Charles Burns. If that seems a wacky mix, it is, but the fun starts with naming the elements of Benedict's elusive painterly hybrids.

Benedict depicts saints using the traditional rules; the saints must be portrayed with their associated symbols, usually the instruments of their martyrdom. The figures are, for the most part, hunky and hyper-masculine, revealing the only slightly sublimated' SM-based eroticism that traditional martyrdom scenes share with Tom of Finland drawings.

Benedict's choices are usually obscure, such as Saint Florian, the patron saint of firemen, who is depicted in a fireman's coat and hat, ready for uniform night at the leather bar. (He was, according to his legend, drowned; it is the bucket, not the fire, in the painting that prefigures his undoing.) Or take, for example, San Gregorio Hernandez, a Venezuelan who was killed in a car crash, at a time when there were only three cars in the country. Benedict's version makes him look like a comic South American actor with an antique steering wheel. Benedict is obviously fascinated by these bizarre characters, and enjoys giving the religious also-rans a new lease on life.

Benedict has a passionate interest in secret societies; like any conspiracy-theory zealot, he finds (or creates) links between Freemasons, pirates, magicians and Boy Scouts. The Third Degree shows George Washington's mock funeral, in which he playacts his death in order to be reborn as a Mason of the next ranking.

Some viewers were perturbed by their inability to puzzle out the connections the artist was making between his obsessions, but I fear they were missing the point. For Benedict, both saints and secret societies are heady and intoxicating; the artist is clearly, ecstatically, under the influence. We are lucky he has invited us along for the trip.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Brant Publications, Inc.
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