Guy Benfield
Kaliman Gallery
******
By Ginny Gordon
Benfield's work is "very gay and eighties"
Listen to the sweet, the future is dark. When I walked into Guy Benfield’s new exhibition, I barfed. I puked a little into my mouth, not so that anyone would notice, but that’s what happened. The colours are hideous. An emetic mix of fluorescent pinks and oranges and ultra-violets, all set off by lashings of faecal browns and black spray paint arranged with all the compositional charm of a knife fight between Dash Snow and Thomas Hirschhorn. It’s that hip.
I later rang the artist – who is Australian, but lives in Brooklyn – and asked why he uses the same colours as every other annoying New York artist. Apparently it’s because they all shop for materials at the same place, a warehouse called Canal Plastics where you can buy silver Mylar sheeting by the metre.
Speaking of knife fights, there are knives all over the place in this show. They are flying out of pink triangles and into fat boy jock straps, and keeping them company are lots of cocks. The cocks are also flying around, unattached to anything in particular, although one fat one looks like it is trying to smoke a cigarette. I asked if the cocks are afraid of the knives, but Benfield said that they’re all friends, so not to worry.
Benfield also remarked that a friend of his thought that the collages look like gay 80s album graphics.
“That’s exactly right,” he purred, “it does look very gay and eighties”. Lots of knives and cocks, and even a big sculpture of a doner kebab (cock-turd) stolen from a Berlin kebab shop and doused in more hideous paint.
Benfield is chiefly known in Avant-Art circles for his performances, so this style of show, with stuff you can actually buy, is kind of a departure. You should buy it all, because Benfield is about to become huge.
Other than knives and cocks, what other recognisable symbols can be found in Benfield’s work? Modernist furnishings, Karl Lagerfeld, Black Panthers, Theosophy, chicks, Sculptures by Barnett Newman, hippies, primitive masks.