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30/3/2011

Ned Vena

Michael Benevento, Los Angeles

Michael Benevento is pleased to present the solo exhibition of New York based artist Ned Vena. The exhibition will feature a new body of work including seven white paintings, a group of rubber, “target” paintings, a vinyl wall relief and a 16mm film. This exhibition will also extend into and inaugurate an adjacent exhibition space (7556 W. Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90046).

Vena’s White Paintings have their roots in motifs originating from Frank Stella’s iconic ‘Black Painting,’ Die Fahne Hoch (1958). Breaking down, reassembling, rearticulating and inverting the ratios and relationships of particular histories of minimalism, Vena’s White Paintings are composed of four quadrants of repeating right angles originating at the center of the canvas at the intersection of two perpendicular lines - a conceptual and formal thread throughout the exhibition. Using flat white Rustoleum enamel, Vena’s paintings incorporate a layer of vinyl, which is painted over before ultimately being removed, leaving behind ridges of white paint in a four-quadrant formation. For this exhibition Vena created six long, thin paintings and one large vertical work, all on canvas, gesturing towards a reflexive way of thinking about certain histories of painting and representation.

Extending from Vena’s interest in linen as a historical component of painting, Vena’s three “Target” paintings are created through a series of concentric vinyl circles – ‘crosshairs’ – stenciled onto linen with a sprayed rubber. Rather than maintaining perfect symmetry, Vena’s material process skews the center of his images, examining the mis-registration of patterns and distortion of images. His works pun the literal, gesturing towards the cannon as something to both aspire to and aim to destroy.

Vena’s vinyl patterns also emerge in his 16mm film. While Vena’s works in other media often meditate on the unintentional and uncontrolled marks occurring when one set of materials is introduced and removed from another set of materials during production, Vena’s film not only visualizes the particular vinyl patterns the artist has painstakingly composed onto the filmstrip, but also reveals the dust, scratches and fingerprints amassed during production. In this sense, the film itself is an extension of Vena’s large vinyl wall relief, which has been installed in conjunction with the film, and aims to extract a language of literal representation and replace it with a language of abstraction.

Ned Vena (b.1982) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Opening Thursday, March 31, from 6-8pm.

Michael Benevento
7578 Sunset Boulevard, LA, CA 90046
hours: Tuesday-Saturday 10am-5pm.
free admission

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