AMY BENNET AT ARMONY NYC

Posted on March 11, 2013 by admin

How beautiful was New York these days that The Armory was on. Fairs, openings, art crowd and collectors, all moving  forward in Manhattan: selling, promoting , running up and downtown, closing deals during dinners at the most desiderable restaurants. Of course you have the perception that everthing is there to be sold as it has to be, but for us, no money collectors, is good to buy and store works of art in our minds. For us NMC, such few days of “art world reuinion ” is a gift. They can talk as bad as they want about art fairs, but the only way of divining into contemporary is just that, going to a fair. Among all the artists featured this year, I literally fell in love with Amy Bennet. Her paintings are narrative, evocatve, exquisite. “I am interested in storytelling over time through repeated depictions of the same house or car or person, seasonal changes, and shifting vantage points. Like the disturbing difficulty of trying to put rolls of film in order several years after the pictures have been taken, I hope the collective images suggest a known past that is just beyond reach. I intend for the tiny scale to enhance an urge for more information. Similar to a memory, they are fictional constructions of significant moments and distillations of experience. One of my challenges is to invite the viewer to form his or her own connection and narrative so that he may empathize with the occupants’ seemingly mundane existence. Working with common themes such as transition, aging, isolation, and loss, I am interested in the fragility of relationships and the awkwardness of a group of people trying to coexist and relate to one another. As I transitioned my model into winter, snowbanks of increasing depth seemed to fortify a sense of isolation and quietness. The paintings portray both the magical and suffocating potential of snow, the wonder at its stark beauty and the hopelessness that spring might never come”.

http://www.amybennett.com/home.html