Sadie
Benning



PORTFOLIO
CV
PRESS


Born in 1973 in Madison, Wisconsin, United States
Lives and works in New York, United States

Sadie Benning started making experimental videos as a teenager in 1988. The low-fi black and white videos explored aspects of identity, language and memory. Improvising with materials that were immediately available at the time, Benning constructed moving images from found objects, drawings, text, performance and personally shot footage. The form, content and poetics explored in these earlier video works has expanded over the past two decades, as the artist continues to wrestle with evolving, political, conceptual and material questions.

More recently, Benning has produced wall-mounted works that trouble the categories of painting, drawing and sculpture. These works begin with a tracing on a single panel of wood. The component parts of the image are cut-out, layers of aqua-resin are applied to these forms, which are then sanded and molded, and finally fit back together to form the final composition. When assembled, the gaps between the pieces becomes a conceptual space of personal projection: « There is a space between the panels that is the third space I’m talking about – the place where you have to picture something else. You have to imagine the line that is missing. It’s just air, and shadow. »




ARTWORKS

Where? They, Their, There
2023
Acrylic gouache on fabric
38 x 29,20 cm
Trees in Water
2023
Acrylic gouache on fabric
38 x 29,20 cm
Sky Unawares
2013
Acrylic gouache on fabric
38 x 29,20 cm
The Hustle
2023
Acrylic gouache on fabric
38 x 29,20 cm
Momentous
2023
Acrylic gouache on fabric
38 x 29,20 cm
Calendar Man
2023
Acrylic gouache on fabric
38 x 29,20 cm
Untitled (cut-out)
2022
Collage, acrylic gouache on paper
38 x 30,5 cm
Untitled (cut-out)
2022
Collage, acrylic gouache on paper
38 x 30,5 cm
Untitled (cut-out)
2022
Framed collage, acrylic gouache on paper
51 x 40 cm
Blow-up #30
2018
Wood, aqua resin, casein, and acrylic gouache
149,9 x 103,5 cm
Zebra
2016
Medite, aqua resin, casein and acrylic, found object, photographs, digital prints
124,4 x 124,4 x 10,5 cm
Truck
2016
Medite, aqua resin, casein and acrylic, found object, photographs, digital prints
177,8 x 116,8 x 14,5 cm
Building
2016
Medite, aqua resin, casein and acrylic, found objects, photographs, digital print
81,5 x 148,5 x 17 cm
Happenings
2016
Medite, aqua resin, casein and acrylic, photographs, digital print
111.7 x 73.6 x 4 cm
X
2016
Medite, aqua resin, casein and acrylic
84 x 170 cm



EXHIBITIONS

Cigarette immatérielle
Air de Paris, Romainville
2023
Sleep Rock
Camden Art Centre, London
2018
Shared Eye
Kunsthalle Basel
2017
L'oeil de l'esprit
Air de Paris, Paris
2016