Celebrated artist Lynda Benglis is poised for a major exhibition of her early works at the Thomas Dane Gallery in May 2024. The show will feature two significant groups of works from the era of 1972 to 1976 – her renowned knot sculptures and her experimental video installations.
In her trademark unorthodox approach, Benglis responded to the aesthetics of the sixties by distorting its forms and ideologies into ‘knots,’ and then embellishing them with sparkles, plaster, paint, or metallic coatings. Her knots have been described as too garish to be pretty and too beautiful to be vulgar, defying conventional tastes and the industrial production methods prevalent during the period.
Benglis’s explorations into video art – a new medium at the time – were equally pioneering. Her pieces, such as Collage (1973), Now (1973), and Document (1972), experimented with layering of space, image, and time, blurring the boundaries between foreground, background and various levels of reality.
An autobiographical video work, Home Tape Revised (1972), shows Benglis’s family on a visit back to Louisiana, which she then revisited and narrated, creating multiple layers of interpretation. Benglis’s innovative exploration of the self through both video and sculpture were ahead of their time and marked the beginning of her groundbreaking career.
Benglis, a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and two National Endowment for the Arts grants, has been celebrated for her ecstatic and playful forms which straddle the realms of the organic and the abstract. Her work has been showcased in numerous solo exhibitions at esteemed institutions such as the Nasher Sculpture Center, the National Gallery of Art, the Museum of Cycladic Art, and many others.
In a remarkable celebration of form and function, Thomas Dane Gallery in London will, in May 2024, present two influential bodies of work by American artist Lynda Benglis. The exhibition marks the first time these works, from the period 1972-1976, will be displayed together outside the U.S.
Benglis, born in 1941 in Lake Charles, Louisiana, is renowned for her pulsating sculptures and videos, which have managed to retain their raw originality and enduring spirit. The artist’s work from the 70s was marked by vigorous experimentation, as she redefined the hard-edge aesthetics of the 60s through distortion and deformation.
Notably, Benglis’s knotted sculptures, imbued with sparkles, plaster, and paint or metallic coatings, engage in a dialogue with their space and time. They contradict the minimalistic aesthetics of industrial production, prevalent during the era, challenging conventional definitions of taste.
Benglis was also a pioneer in the field of video art during the 70s, often referred to as the medium’s “first decade”. Her video pieces are rhythmically slow and sculptural, in stark contrast to the performative theatre of her knotted sculptures.
Among the video works displayed at this exhibition are “Collage” (1973), “Now” (1973), and “Document” (1972), where Benglis layers and manipulates the image of her own face, creating a series of reality levels.
Moreover, her piece “Home Tape Revised” (1972) stands out as a distinctly autobiographical work. In it, Benglis revisits old footage of her family in Louisiana, narrating, or rather, revising this intimate home video, creating an emotionally distanced commentary.
Over the years, Benglis’s work has been a continuous exploration of sensory experience, pushing the boundaries of painting and sculpture. Her pieces, made from a variety of materials – including beeswax, latex, polyurethane foam, plaster, gold, vaporised metals, glass, ceramics, and paper – evince a fascination with process and experimentation.
Benglis’s work has been displayed at numerous prestigious institutions and is part of many public collections, including the Tate Modern in London and The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Her contributions to the field of art have been recognised with several awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and two National Endowment for the Arts grants.
