Marta, and the beginning
A meeting with artist Marta Bencivenni revealed that she had recently returned to painting as a studio practice. One conversation led to another, and soon a collaboration took shape between the artist and C-print’s Ashik Zaman as curator. Marta is currently presenting a solo exhibition at Katarina AP on Södermalm in Stockholm, on view through October 23. Swing by and have a look!
Says Ashik Zaman about the exhibition: A muted, metaphorical undercurrent runs through the works of Marta Bencivenni's exhibition, moving in and out of, and between, seemingly mundane interiors and their adjacent exteriors. A sense of stillness is palpable in the exhibition, reinforced by the absence of bodies in scenes and places that are, understood to be imprinted by human presence. Nevertheless, the pointed exhibition title, The Beginning, suggests a connection between the works and the possibility of a narrative which, through the economical number of a few images, benefits from the viewer’s alert gaze.
The artist describes her practice as rooted in photographic memories and experiences of places, with photographs serving as catalysts for the paintings that subsequently emerge when various memories are joined together.
Once the exhibition’s Italian geography is registered, it becomes impossible, at least for me as a long-time cinephile, not to open a little window in my mind towards cinematic references, such as the Visconti and Scola films of my teenage years. I think of the country road in Visconti’s Ossessione, and the dramatic tension that cuts through the everyday surroundings. I think of the summer dress worn by Sophia Loren in Sunflower, my mother’s favourite film, when I see a casually hung floral dress in one of Marta’s works.
As is already clear, I allow my imagination to stretch quite far, but I also feel that this is precisely what is so generous, and genuinely delightful, about exhibitions that remain open to interpretation, inviting audiences in without imposing too many demands or expectations. A place one can step into, enjoy the artist’s informed skill, and see whatever one wishes or is even able to see, without any rights or wrongs. This is something that often feels lacking in exhibitions today.
Shares Marta Bencivenni about her working process and method: The images somehow come in a rhythm as I walk. I walk a bit. Then I stop. I see something. I pick up my camera. When the lens is in front of my eye and the image hangs inside, I see all the colours together. The camera lens puts a filter over the image. It moves as I search for the right composition, looking for what to include. The building, with its light, its shadows, signs, openings, concrete edges and asphalt, becomes the image at that moment. And then the image becomes the place.
These photographs become raw prints that I keep in my studio for a long time, returning to them over and over again as I paint.
How I do fieldwork is to register, through my consciousness, both the “ugly” and the beautiful, the low and the high. For me, this is also the beginning of all architecture. Or it should be. It is the encounter with reality as it is, right now, in this moment. The most important thing in this work is not to see what you think you should see. It starts with accepting yourself and your personal way of taking in your surroundings. In my work, I strive to reach a focal point that lies somewhere between the viewer and the work, and that simultaneously emerges in the relationship between the images themselves.
Painting is a movement, and it is through the material that this movement can take place. My act of painting is about stepping into a place where this movement can arise and continue. This place is what architecture means to me: that which makes light visible. The material. And directions, ground, wall, opening. I paint on paper because the surface of the paper has depth. With the help of water, the pigments can move both into the paper and across its surface. I experience the paper and the pigments together as a single entity.
When I paint, I move towards something without knowing exactly what it is. It emerges in the moment. There is a presence, a rhythm in which my body, my thoughts, the paper, the pigments, the palette, the colours and the light become one. The movement takes place somewhere in between. They are no longer separate things. It is not only me as a thinking person who paints, nor is it simply the image surface or the materials. The movement happens somewhere between them, and it is there that the image emerges.
I have come to think that my images show what it is like to exist as myself, how I experience the relationship between myself and the world. Because it is always an encounter. For an image to emerge, I have to be there.
Scuola materna III is both the last painting in the series and the first. The circle closes and begins again. Every time I return to this place, this building, new images are born in my mind. Again and again.
Photo credit: Nora Bencivenni Marta Bencivenni’s The Beginning is on view through October 23 at Katarina AP, Katarina Bangata 49, Stockholm. Open Thursday–Sunday, 1–4 pm.