Paul Benney; Night Paintings
Descending the grandeur of Somerset House from the luxurious Strand entrance, down the Stamp Stairs to the old workhouses and the Embankment side, is descending down to a less polished, more exposed part of the building. Stripped bare of oils on canvas, naval coats of arms and marble façades, the embankment galleries and lower-ground level perfectly complement Paul Benney's most recent show of works. Night Paintings are an eerie collection which document the artist's insecurities over what is just beyond the mirror. They transcend their surroundings; placed in Somerset House's old coal houses and and area aptly named Dead Houses, an underground passageway, where tombstones from Inigo Jones's demolished chapel have been laid to rest.
The paintings are set to question religious iconography and challenge a traditional representations of such abstract forces. Benney doesn't intend to place religion in a contemporary setting, indeed he denies his work makes any political stance, setting him apart not only from traditional painters of icons, but also of modern artists who employ religious undertones. These paintings address our unconscious. Life-size figures of photographic realism reach out and apprehend us as we view them, beckoning us into a world we cannot see.
The Tenant tries to touch you, to take you beyond what is real to where he is. We are confused and upset by this reaching, as though his figure seeks our help. Benney's innovative medium of oil and plastic resin makes the surface of the image seem penetrable; you almost want to jerk away from the paintings, scared you may get taken in.
Chandelier really gets to grips with the sense of nocturnal mystery. Suspended over a baron, unreal landscape is an elaborate lit chandelier. It hovers, somewhere between material and ethereal, lit and extinguished, perfection and smashed into thousands of shards. It's incredible a painting can hold you in such suspense.
The defining piece in this exhibition has to be Snow in Jerusalem.Created from a photograph of the artist on a visit to the Holy Land, it makes this questioning of religion and art seem incredibly personal. Is it a vacation, or a pilgrimage? The snow has a temporal hold on a false reality that the artist, painted in a startling purple, is walking through to reach us at the end of the gravestone lined tunnel.
Sadly, its not all good. Pissing Death- a skeleton having a wee into a lake- is just aesthetically awful when lined up against some gems in the show. Whilst it is interesting to see a piece which harbours Benney's allegorical influences, the work of Goya and Velásquez is a far cry from such a crude allusion to the nature of death.
Benney's show is creepy, though provoking and completely insightful. The venue is completely fantastic and allows the paintings to feel like a part of something bigger, beyond the graves, beyond Somerset House and beyond the painter himself.
