Artist: Bennett Slater
Title: “Angel Eyes”
Oil on Birch Wood / Framed
12” x 12”
available at www.benjaminbenjamin.bigcartel.com
Part of the show featuring rivals, this piece depicts the Lee Van Cleef half of the “Clint Eastwood / Lee Van Cleef” rivalry.
Bennett is an illustrator and designer who spends most of his days glued to old science fiction fantasy films and Saturday morning cartoons. This fascination with the imaginatively absurd has formed a surprisingly stable connection with the way his mind imagines the constraints of the physical form, or lack thereof.Utilizing traditional media on natural wooden surfaces, Bennett is heavily inspired by the sharp dualities observed in his world’s natural and cultural ecosystems. He is constantly searching to uncover the balances between the structured form we perceive logically, and the nostalgic flirtations we conjure internally. His work is partly influenced by the precise forms and soft palettes of the Baroque masters, and the bold geometric intensity of the Russian Avant-Garde and Futurism movements. This dichotomy of contrasting artistic disciplines and influences lends itself to the underlying dualities observed in his work. As the acclaimed British art critic, David Sylvester once said, “Warhol turned to photographs of stars, as the Renaissance turned to antiquities, to find images of gods”. Bennett’s work strives to bridge that divide.
