Luis F. Benedit
Henrique Faria, New York
Argentine artist Luis F. Benedit’s recent exhibition at Henrique Faria Gallery in New York is focused on the artist’s explorations regarding the elaboration of habitats and social organization systems. In these explorations he combines his scientific, conceptual, ecological, architectonic and projective knowledge (Benedit was trained as an architect) in order to study the behavior of different groups of animals, plants − and humans −, thus operating as a sort of social anthropologist.
Visitors first come across his Invisible Labyrinth, a 1971 work entirely occupying one of the gallery’s exhibition halls. A com- plex play of light projections having its point of departure in a single source travels round the exhibition space via perfectly callibrated mir- rors and determines a labyrinthine, invisible path that the spectator is forced to tread. Any transgression in the itinerary activates a sound and light alarm that subjects the individual − this time the object of Benedit’s investigations − to a process of trial and error which will be the basis for his/her future behavior.
The second showroom offers a tour of different projects, drawings and “sculptures”, of animal and plant habitats (or interactions). While Benedit’s sketches are fascinating, for they introduce us into a scientific universe twinned with illusion, his “sculptural” renditions are equally captivating. Such is the case of Habitat for Spiders, where Benedit designs an observatory in which he forces a fly to “coexist” with a spider. In Vegetal Labyrinth, dated 1972, a plant orig- inating in a germinated bean must necessarily go all the way through a labyrinth in its process of growth towards an artificial light that is never turned off.
In this way, Benedit draws attention onto the ways of regulating the behavior of social groups, questioning the contradictory relationship between natural and artificial, and having an impact on issues that go beyond the structures of animal behavior with which he works.
