curated by Pietro Gaglianò
04.2008
C
In contemporary forms of communication, the process is more interesting than the outcome. a final work – like a recently-ironed sheet, finished, folded, and placed in a drawer – has become cold and distant. a bottle of coca cola gone flat. it has lost the fizz of fermentation that made it alive and interesting, the essential vitality that when found will draw you in, leaving no choice but to stare at it, and if possible, get inside. when, working on group exhibitions, I ask an artist for work which is a few years old, I can detect in their reply a slight tone of embarrassment. the same cringing triggered by the rediscovery of a highly personal diary from when you were at high school, or the stinging nausea brought on by the memory of a deceased loved one. works, when completely finished, quickly start to smell of decaying corpses and there is no remedy. they can be looked at and studied. if you are a collector you can put them in your house. but the artist wants nothing more to do with them. artists who work in theatre and performance are more fortunate in this respect. a few days ago I discussed this with the motus and they agree. what BENNY does is of this ilk, continuously moving. in fact, he does not finish anything. by this I mean that he leaves all his projects open, breathing, porous and soaked in life. curating his shows is difficult, but it is an exceptional challenge and, as I say, fully draws you in.
F
all this can be imagined as the trailer for a film, or rather, a concise story-board. everything that BENNY makes is inseparable from hints of a cinemagraphic culture including paul morrisey (trash) and francis ford coppola (boys of 56th road), davide ferrario (the end of the night) and michael lehmann (splinters of folly), but also from the real world and the daily happenings in places like littleton, palermo and the suburbs of london. sequences of visions imagined by BENNY are paratactical, and flow just like in films, like in certain films. rebellion moves the history of the world forward – writes aurelio grimaldi. this is fine, but let us not forget that violence is woven in with nihilism like “qual supplice tralcio di vite”.
H
what can the world possibly do but ruin him? mister brother, at seventeen, can have anything he wants, and sees nothing extraordinary about the fact. (Michael Cunningham)
A
from certain places in Sicily and London to others in Tuscany, communication with BENNY is inevitably erratic. phone calls, cryptic text messages, emails devoid of punctuation coming from some remote internet point due to his terminal problems with computers. sometimes photos. long and beautiful texts that kidnap you like a novel. they appear on my i-book from who knows where, and it’s impossible to understand if they relate to his personal life or the work we are doing together. visualizing a coherent process in BENNY’S work was arduous. sometimes he wanted to include everything, at other times nothing. then we came to the synthesis of room 1, perhaps enough by itself, and to the scene to be put together in room 2. francesco left us do it. the room is there, as BENNY recalls it, or wishes to recall it. the atmosphere, the scent and light. and the objects, of course, the objects. their declared absence multiplies the meaning of their presence in the memory. those which are there, there are (in a certain sense) by chance (also perhaps since francesco not let him create a project with two empty rooms). and anyway they are there, but can’t be used – like images of memories. you have things, but it’s like not having them because you can’t change them.
J
setting upon a title for the exhibition was also tiring. we thought of at least a dozen. one day BENNY suggested ‘gentleman’. yes, at last. but maybe not? singular or plural? singular. no. he wasn’t sure. I liked ‘gentleman‘, I thought it was ironic and descriptive (but not overly). it is suspended and, if come across in the exhibition, would create an oxymoronic impression. we – myself and francesco – decided upon ‘gentleman’, in the singular, and we imposed it on BENNY. all agreed (paruit sed non est). BENNY did the invitation drawing, wrote the title by hand and did the rest. it went to press. he had written ‘gentlemen’, in the plural. I still wonder if he did it on purpose.
L
an imaginative beauty.
D
of course there is youtube, blogging, forum chat and everything else on the net. there is freedom and fear. there is a lack of bias that reminds me of an artist friend’s (fabio cresci) story in which a traveller arrives in a country where the man who governs is invisible, but governs nonetheless, and residents think they live by a principle of self-determination. but the great deception is obvious to anyone from abroad, and the traveller tells them all is not as they believe. he tells them that there is a man who governs them and that their autonomy is self-delusion. they hunt him. the traveler, I mean. they can’t bring themselves to believe in the existence of the hidden man who rules them.
G
the object is a self-referential fetish, it speaks of itself in a quiet and enunciating way and replacing its (trivial) immanence for the symbol of which could be the bearer.
E
suspension points (ensure always 3).
I
From: benedetto.chirco [mailto: XXX]
Sent: Sunday, September 23, 2007 18:33
To: pietro_gagliano
Subject: Re: <no subject>
Thanks Peter,
you’re always bang on the minute
————-
From: benedetto.chirco [mailto: XXX]
Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2007 16:27
To: pietro_gagliano
Subject: Re:
Hi,
Just shooting the sums for a more precise work programme and we can talk about the personal show if you fancy .. but the broad outlines of the whole should remain as we said.
————-
From: benedetto.chirco [mailto: XXX]
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2007 18:38
To: pietrogagliano
Subject: Re: WHERE ARE YOU?
Hello madman,
have you seen the site?
do I have permission to link the myspace page?
or you were you so disgusted you couldn’t tell me?
————-
From: benedetto.chirco [mailto: XXX]
Sent: Sunday, March 9, 2008 18.37
To: pietrogagliano
Subject: Re: Benny Chirco – solo show
Hello my friend,
excuse for the non-professionality, but I found a moment of relaxation to go through and try to correct a page of something I’ve written.
I cut a descriptive part affecting the final work but read it and then we’ll talk.
Benny
————-
From: benedetto.chirco [mailto: XXX]
Sent: Monday, March 10, 2008 16:43
To: pietrogagliano
Subject: Re: A: Benny Chirco – solo show
Hello Peter, can you confirm by sms too?
M
BENNY condenses several stories in the creation of a room (the wished-for room) with a process that passes several times through a positivist attitude, but is dominated by an adhesion to a media culture cutting edge.” (from the catalogue of the exhibition storytellers, castle dell’acciaiolo, scandicci, July 2007, regarding BENNY’s project the dream room)
K
BENNY is a dropout.
B
once the road was a place of rebellion, individualism unconventionality, and of social sticking to the group. the world of BENNY is almost all in one room. apathetic and vaguely parasitic individuals. they do not want more heroes, they want almost nothing. only some objects. with BENNY everything always comes from one incidentally narrative place, unconsciously assimilating expressions from English-speaking culture and literature – from zadie smith to irvine welsh through a. m. homes. it is her indeed – with all the objects and the fake securities which they in turn give to her characters, because they give themselves names and go on existing – who has the key to penetrate some of the tensions to be found in BENNY’s work.
