​

“he acts as trash” (Lacan 2001 [1973] p. 519)  Psychoanalytic theorist Jaques Lacan says this as he refers to the position the analyst takes in discourse.   

​

Traveling between Berlin and D.C., Benedicto has been exploring the idea of “The Body and Infinite Excess” and what that might mean both inside and outside the context of clinical Lacanian psychoanalysis; his pursuit spans painting, sculpture, photography, and installation.   This wide variety of work is reminiscent of a group exhibition or even a retrospective, and centers around themes of the body and excess.  

   

In a series of photographs that feel more like a relic of performance, dramatically draped trash bags serve as a backdrop for the artist, rendering him almost indistinguishable from the material indicative of a surplus, waste, or excess.  The very same material used in the photographs is then melted with a jet engine to yield large-scale paintings with skin-like texture  disguising a replica of the artist’s ear.   

“eyes of the Other” is an installation in which guests are invited to take a key from a concrete cube and participate in a trade: a sculpture of the artist’s ear for their smartphones – set to record video of the exhibition – temporarily  locked in the box and secured with a trash bin elastic band.  In the center of the installation lies a concrete cube pierced by 20 keys that correspond to lock boxes installed along the periphery, containing the sculpture of the artist’s ear.  When all of the ears have been replaced with surveilling phones, all that will remain is a ring of posthuman eyes (smartphones) forming an overwhelming faceless gaze.

​

An additional solid silver sculpture of the artists ear, packed into an oversized plexiglass box, will oxidize over time to the point of full obfuscation.  Across from the silver ear hangs a series of four lenticular prints that shift with even the slightest movement, a dynamic vertigo-inducing abstraction distorts the source image of the artist’s nude body beyond recognition.

 

The varied work in "The Body and Infinite Excess" is unified by the artist’s process of free association, a critical type of speech in Lacan's "Analyst Discourse." This raises the question: “What does it mean that one speaks so much about listening?"

​

​

​