Manfredi Beninati

Born in Palermo in 1970. He studied Law and Film. He has exhibited widely, with solo shows at the Lorcan O’Neill Gallery in Rome (2006); the Galeria Braga Menendez in Buenos Aires (2007); the James Cohan Gallery in New York (2008), the Tomio Koyama Gallery in Tokyo (2008); the Max Wigram Gallery in London (2010). He has also participated to a number of international group exhibitions; among them The Venice Biennale (2005); The Liverpool Biennial (2008) and the Athens Biennale (2009).

 

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 from the quantity of yourself that you let into your work. Personal experiences translate into memories resulting from a period of time during which you have learnt something, that allows you to discern them in a more sophisticated way than before. The same applies to a work of art. You need time to develop something not necessarily pleasing to others but strongly personal. Something that even just in a 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 develop a narrative and that's why I'm constantly working on so many drawings, paintings, sculptures. I keep each one with me for months or even years.

 

Manfredi Beninati, from an interview by Lowenna Waters in The White Review, London, 2011