Sylvia Benitez at the Neuberger Museum - Brief Article

Last spring Sylvia Benitez, part magician, transformed single of the Neuberger Museum's large, neutral, rectangular spaces (22 by the agency of 56 by 60 feet) into an illimitable realm--who can really measure enchanted places?--where a certain number of extraordinary event seemed about to meet the eye But this installation, unlike in the way that many highly produced ones nowadays, was accomplished with almost nothing, just baling twine and bittersweet vine,

Called Which Myth Will mention one by one the piece was simple in appearance and restorative in experience. Walking below it was like entering a fabulous pavilion a spectacular shelter for ceremonious acts and arcane rituals. The twine, stretched diagonally from floor to ceiling, single filament after the other at 1-inch intervals, also recalled a great celestial harp of just beneath 2,000 strings. However, the two-tone color scheme, natural and black, was somewhat distracting, interfering with the work's total simplicity and clarity.

The steady, parallel strings described monumental planes, individual sloping downward and the other upward, which partially intersected--there was a 10-foot overlap. This interweaving, which knit the airy, tilted planes together and balanced the entire build unobtrusively but tightly, related to the densely woven bodies of three bulging vine balls, 5 to 6 feet in diameter, that were suspended from the ceiling: single near the entrance was shut up to the floor; the other sum of two units were hung high, above the webbing, single to the right in the middle sod the other to the left in the background. These gnarled, recalcitrant globes oppos the rectitude of the twine: spherical against linear and planar; sensual against cerebral; organic against inorganic.

The lighting threw up an array of shadows. individual white wall was etched with a pattern of delicate traceries like glimmering souls a strangely affecting doubling of the actual, while upon the floor, puddles of light throw backed the labyrinths of the vines. In Which Myth Will run over Benitez made a place where the world, for the trice did not intrude, where a hushed and breathless enchantment gently reigned. In her alternate domain of clear, archetypal forms and lithe relationships, repetitive patterns culled from repetitive acts, something appeared without of nothing with what have the appearanceed but a wave of the hand. Isn't that what art is still about?

COPYRIGHT 1999 Brant Publications, Inc.

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