DISTANT SYSTEMS

Micaela Benedicto

Nov 16 – Dec 7, 2013

Blanc Gallery

145 Katipunan Avenue

A still life is a static state filled with vibratory motion, or resonance.

A quivering in the stability of a category or a trajectory,

it gives the ordinary the charge of an unfolding.

It can turn the self into a dreaming scene, if only for a minute.

—Kathleen Stewart

In DISTANT SYSTEMS, Micaela Benedicto builds structural assemblages and fictional landscapes around found photographs of human figures suspended in motion. Displaced from their original backgrounds, the captured poses and impending movements of the figures condition and propel the form and composition of the objects that surround them. Using photographic techniques and an architectural language, the artist creates images that depict transition, transformation, and human perception.

In Part 1: Photograms, the artist creates small three-dimensional structures out of plexiglass, cardboard, wood, and metal and juxtaposes them to create “sets” or surroundings. Repeated and placed in varying positions, then exposed to light and captured without a camera, the objects undergo distortions in shadow and depth, taking on newfound forms. The human figures, developed in the positive, appear as faded spectators momentarily passing through unfamiliar scenery.

Part 2: Assemblies is a series of three-dimensional models—compositions of tangible lines and planes that resemble building cuts and fragments. Focus is placed on trajectories, through the recurring appearance of the slanted line and the unfolding of paths. In the pieces Cubic and Disc, a void is contained in a transparent, defined shape, interrupted in parts by the appearance of objects and continuous planes.

The images and structures are made with the rudimentary gestures of architecture in its dreaming state, capturing and referencing the last traces of a memory, or the beginning lines of a future narrative.

 WORKS