Cypheroccult
Benedicto suspends his work in a constant process that remains in pursuit of desire, worship and influence. The preliminary repetition of carving concentric lines or layering weighted concrete, varnish and graphite imbues the work with an insatiable desire for what the fetish replaces. Historically, fetish referred to a fabricated religious object revered for magical powers, but now, the fetish contains a melancholy for the unattainable. The past century has secularized the spiritual concept with Binet’s sexual fetish and Marx’s commodity fetishism. The greater power represented by the fetish has been replaced with material.
The repetitive and tedious forces behind Cypheroccult reflect the phenomenon of a fetish’s provocation. These objects present process as a solution to the self-isolating boredom that resists stimulation and pleasure, and are terse amidst the internet age’s perverse accessibility. Anthropologist Rosaline C. Morris describes the fetish as “a gesture that repeats itself without reproducing... a logic that encompasses illogic.”
Painted over the faces of Cypheroccult, are digital synecdoches representing meta-value game theory that supports the internet’s system, board games, roto-conveyor systems and even Cypheroccult itself. The objects of Cypher0cult maintain imperceptible patterns that quell the insatiable desire for material stimulation. Even the referential graphics sourced from Ukrainian Trademarks 1960-1980’s frustrate the transactional satisfaction of language. One should acknowledge the dismissive triumph of complete understanding when standing before the abyss of stillness and intimacy in this work.
Each work in Cypheroccult contains a unique steel label embossed with 24 words from the GITHUB BIP-39 list of 2048 words generally used to create a unique private key; silicone encases each key to prevent erosion. A 9 x 11 inch slab of concrete holds the silicone encased keys, and a steel structure fixing the work to the wall suspends its weight. Each work contains a .2 BTC, and combined, this collection of tags unlocks another .5BTC. Each work contains a microchip with multi-signature access to authenticate, track and secure itself.
Alongside the vaults of Cypheroccult hang tense, glossy graphite carvings. Interspersing these monoliths hang protective frames with stretched studies. Cypheroccult conceals valuable objects and dedicatory time. Within this collection exists LF Discreet; a series of burned trash bags embedded within custom steel frames. Like lacerated skin, these works aestheticize the containers of human disposal. Despite an ever-growing dependency on digital abstraction, human life continues in pursuit of the obvious or tangible, and like an ouroboros, fails to see the object its desire replaces with a fetish for fungibles.
The economy of expression in fetish subtleties maintains effect in the distance between a participant and the object of desire tormenting the substitute. In the space between automation’s representation of idea and the limiting human grasp, is desire and process, where Benedicto finds a sensitive point for his studio. Although Cypheroccult develops under laborious scrutiny, it represents an ideal beyond human reach, within the realm of post- and trans-humanism; where process and satisfaction may be concordant.
