the White Review

Manfredi Beninati Interviewed by Lowenna Waters.  (click here for original article)

You have described the process of working on 30 – 40 drawings at a time as ‘an organisation of the imagination’, please comment on your creative process.

To me art is about sharing your personal experiences with the rest of the world. Therefore the difference between a good (significant) artist and a bad (insignificant) one derives also (maybe even mainly, i would say) from the quantity of yourself you let into your work. Personal experiences translate into memories resulting from a period of time during which you have learnt something that allow you to discern in a more sofisticated way than before. The same applies to a work of art. You need time to develope something not necessarily pleasing to the others but strongly personal. Something that even just in one single detail shows a hidden spot of our reality through the imposition of your point of view, through trying not to let the other's expectations influence your work. I think you need to spend time with your work and develope a narrative through time, and that's why i'm constantly working on so many drawings, paintings, sculptures at once. I keep each one with me for months or even years.
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There is a restless emotional dichotomy in your work – a tension between serenity and anxiety. Is it something to do with your interest in being as objective as possible?

Exactly... in life we experience good things and bad things. They are all necessary events in the making of ourselves, so we should treat both, goodness and badness (or serenity and anxiety) with the same amount of care and respect. Maybe one day we wake up to find out that the roles have inverted, that good is bad and vice versa. that's always possible.
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You place tangible cultural quotations and memories taken from photographs within surreal dreamscapes which distort time and space. How do these intricate detailed visual representations accumulate?

Through work...
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Your work is often described as having a strong fragmented narrative; does this have anything to do with your passion for cinematography?

I'd rather say that my passion for narration makes me passionate about cinema and art as well as any other medium that allows you to tell a story. In my art works it is true that thare are always lots of fragments that, if you want, you can piece together following your own sense of narrative and make up your own story, your own film, if you prefer. This is more evident in my installations, that are always conceived as if they were film stills in three dimensions, depicting a moment when all the human caracters have left the scene, and you can decide what's happened a second before and what will happen a second after you have left.
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Do you have any comments on the Venice Biennale; its place in contemporary culture, your contribution to the 2009 event and the up and coming 2011 Biennale?

When I became an artist in year 2000 I didn't know much about contemporary art world, else than the MOMA, the TATE and the Venice Biennale. Those were my only three reference points anything else came to me as something new. I don't have much to tell about the 2009 one as I didn't bother going there. All I can tell you is that I sent a fresco portraying F. T. Marinetti playing noise on the intonarumori (an instrument designed by the author of 'The Art of Noise', Russolo) that I made in Los Angeles (my son Leone was born there a couple of weeks before).
I could tell you a lot about my first Venice Biennale, the 2005 one, where I made my first installation ("To take notes for a dream that begins in the afternoon and continues through the night (and is not canceled out on awakening) or Waking up on a beach in the scorching sun."). It was a cinematographic set made by professional set carpenters at Cinecittà in Rome. It was a great experience indeed. I spent 2 weeks there at the Giardini (where most national pavilions are) and got to hang up with great people and to meet amazing artists. plus i even got the audience award for that piece.
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Do you think contemporary artists have any moral duty to civil society?

This is a recurring question in my interviews, so I can answer it by memory:
yes indeed, they play a very important (foundamental) role in society. Theyr role is opposed to philosophy's. Art reveils mysteries concerning us individuals and society of people and philosophy explains why they are there. The moment that an artist turns philosopher (which happens often) then things don't work anymore. A. Bazin once said that cinema is anything in between Hitchcock and Antonioni. I would quote him saying that society is anything between Art (any form of art) and Philosophy (symbolizing the knowledge, rationality).
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This summer just passed, I stayed with a Sicilian friend in Catania. I recognised the Baroque architecture and neon pastel colours in the cassata sweets apparent in your work. Also, the installation work “To Think of Something”, that peers onto domestic scenes reminded me of walking the narrow window lined streets of Catania, gazing directly into people’s lives. How does having your studio in Palermo and growing up in this culture affected your work?

Catania and Palermo are actually quite far apart from each other. Those 250 km that fisically divide them in cultural terms are are ten times as many. This is from my point of view, of course, being myself a sicilian. I understand that you as an English person might not find the two that dissimilar. Plus I have just moved back to Palermo after almost twenty years. It must be that my childhood memories are muche stronger than the rest.
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Are the concepts of truth and beauty interesting to you in connection with your work?

Actually, not at all. Unless by beauty you mean balance, in which case I would reply, maybe. And... unless you mean realism by truth, in which case I would say... certainly yes. The two issues come together to me. As a sort of balance of my own is the fulcrum of my work and it is obtained partly by juxtaposing realism and blured, undefined, incongruous elements.
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I have read you compiled a catalogue of artists who you have learnt from and who have influenced your work. Who is included in it?

Have I? I don't remember doing it but I can satisfy your curiosity anyway. here are the first ten to come to my mind: Marco Ferreri, Ermanno Olmi, Franco Piavoli, Andrej Tarkovskij, Medardo Rosso, Piero della Francesca, Giorgio de Chirico, Giacomo Serpotta, Gaetano Zumbo (or Zummo), Homer.
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Folkloristic, poetic amalgamations of images are formed in your drawings and paintings; do you have any comments on these themes?

They represent my personal imagery, i guess. They just appear in my works without being invited. You know how it is when you are working in your studio completely absorbed in your world. Things, sometimes, just happen by themselves. Sometimes you even have to fight against disorder, and that take a lo of energy to control, to try clear the work of the junk that keeps accumulating. That's what happens in my studio, at least.
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The series of drawings and sculptures I saw exhibited at the Max Wigram Gallery in the exhibition Deicembre 2039 each focused around a specific protagonist; your mother, your girlfriend, your late brother. What are your comments on this solo show?

The drawings in that show have been made over a piriod of seven years while the sculptures over a couple of months. I made the first of those drawing back in 2003-2004 and was going to be part of my private family album alonge with another ten, or so, drawings each one depicting the private, inner world of each member of my closest family. This body of work was meant and conceived not to be shown in public but to remain part of my private collection of my own works. It all started when I moved to e very big studio in rome where the vastness of the space enticed me to make what I had been doing up to then (drawings) in a mauch larger scale. In 2004 one of them ended up being shown at an exhibition at the royal academy in London where it remained after a gallerist sold it to an english collector, without asking me first, so that my prject was left orphan of the piece that started it (it was the first of the series. it was titled Flavio and Palermo, and was dedicated to my brother who has passed away in 2006). I eventually decided to do the dicembre 2039 exhibition just to kind of re-unite Flavio with other members of his family. My wife (who has never met him) is there with our son Leone.

and how your work has developed since?

Well the last of those drawings was only started a few month before the show at the beginning of 2010!
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In an interview conducted for UOVO magazine in 2007, when asked about emotional themes in your work, you made the comment, ‘I hate good people.’ I found this confusing. Could you elucidate this point?

That interview was formulated in Italian and then translated into English, so it could be either a case of misinterpretation, or incorrect translation or just me lying, which is something i do a lot, especially in interviews where I make up stories that, of course, get taken seriously by the interviewer. I believe that an artist should only tell his truth through his work, although I love talking to people in words. It is also true that I tend not to trust "nice" people, anyway.
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Do you think art should be playful and optimistic?

No.
Or maybe I should reply not necessarily to be politically correct!
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From your work I have learnt things about your life and other people’s lives. Do you think it is a fair comment to say art is; and is about, people?

Art is about us humans, of course. We invented it, didn't we?
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Do you have any advice for young people trying to achieve success in this economic climate?

Can you advise me first? What's wrong with this economic climate? If you decide to devote your life to making art you should also forget about money. Being successful doesn't mean you are doing good art. Actually, from what I see around, I would say quite the opposite.
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Your works present the internal connection we all hold that links us to our childhood, adolescence and the transient present: do you think these memories constitute an individual?

Indeed they do. I think our whole adult lives revolve around our childhoods. We are all looking for the flavours and smells of the time when we were innocent.
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What are you working on currently, what themes are you interested in and what are your plans for the coming years?

I'm working on some twenty oil paintings and on some large scale sculptures of piles of chairs and plants made out of plaster and other materials. I'm also working on two different installations, the first one of which has to be ready by the 12th of this month.