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Magazine
02 may 2024, Flor Linckens
Last chance: the sculptural canvases of Myles Bennett
The Thin Line, Rutger Brandt Gallery. Photo: Almicheal Fraay
Until 11 May, Rutger Brandt Gallery in Amsterdam is presenting an exhibition with work by Myles Bennett. The American artist operates a multidisciplinary practice, for which he effectively blurs the lines between disciplines including painting, drawing and sculpture.
Myles Bennett was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1983, and currently lives and works in Brooklyn. He earned his bachelor’s degrees in Fine Arts and Architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design. While architecture has shifted more into the background of his practice, its essence reemerges time and again: from an affinity for structure and a certain repetition to the ways in which his works relate to the human scale.
Myles Bennett, Reconstructed Prism, 2024, Rutger Brandt Gallery
Some of the artist’s works may initially appear quite straightforward when you read only the technical description — ink, acrylic and coloured pencil on canvas on an oak support — but the actual artwork often resembles a defragmented, complex and abstract textile work instead of a painting. Bennett explores the materiality of canvas and investigates (and experiments with) its possibilities. He manipulates the fibers, integrating their texture and structure into his pieces. For instance, Bennett applies ink to both the front and the back of the raw canvas, creating colour gradients that vary in intensity depending on which side he has worked on. He then frequently uses a small blade to remove the warp — the vertical threads of the canvas — either partially or entirely with great precision. As a result, only the finest threads remain, rendering the piece semi-transparent and almost sculptural in form, while ensuring that the surrounding light and space start playing a role in the viewer’s experience.
Myles Bennett, Reconstructed Prism 3, 2022, Rutger Brandt Gallery
Thematically, the artist draws inspiration from architectural drawings and 18th-century landscape paintings, as well as the work of Charles-Louis Hanon. This 19th-century French composer and piano pedagogue developed a method for pianists to build a type of muscle memory through intensive repetition and discipline, training their fingers to move automatically and independently of one another. This assists the pianists in learning increasingly complex pieces of music with less mental strain, as a way of getting closer to the artistic essence. Bennett explores what this intuitive and meditative method could mean for him as a visual artist.
Myles Bennett, Reconstructed Prism (detail), 2024, Rutger Brandt Gallery
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