Group exhibition
Van Gogh Art Gallery
Madrid / Paris
Madrid – Van Gogh Art Gallery
timing to be added
Paris – International Contemporary Art Fair Paris
23.09.23 – 25.09.23
Escaped animals (2020)
Collage and grattage / acrylic, ink and paper on canvas – Verso signed: Beninga – Dimensions: 40 x 50 cm
The rush (2021)
Acrylic on paper – Signed: Beninga – Dimensions: approx. 70 x 100 cm
Fading rush (2021)
Acrylic on paper – Signed: Beninga – Dimensions: 69,6 x 99,4 cm
Appearance of the ghosts (2020)
Acrylic on paper – Signed: Beninga – Dimensions: 60.2 x 43.2 cm
At the edges of the night (2021)
Acrylic on paper – Signed: Beninga – Dimensions: 35.8 x 47.9 cm
The ghost scale (2021)
Acrylic on paper – Signed: Beninga – Dimensions: 36 x 48 cm
The insect ghost (2020)
Acrylic on paper – Signed: Beninga – Dimensions: 37,7 x 28,4 cm
Measuring sadness (2022)
Acrylic, ink and chalk on paper – Signed: Beninga – Dimensions: approx. 23.8 x 32.4 cm
Pearls and ghosts (2022)
Acrylic and oil on painting board – Verso signed: Beninga – Dimensions: approx. 47.5 x 50 cm
The tracks of a night (2019)
Grattage – Acrylic and ink on paper – Signed: Beninga – Motif: approx. 27.9 x 83.9 cm
Extracts from the catalogue texts for Beninga’s solo exhibitions and exhibition participations:
“Whether it’s a painful daydream or a nightmarish unreality full of fantastic figures – it is not always possible to clearly determine what the unconscious has let loose. What is clear, however, is that Leo Beninga can capture a vague mood, an unknown terrain, an unnamed and eerie atmosphere, and create an impressive work.”
(Seth Pawlewski in the catalogue for Beninga’s Hamburg exhibition Deep Dreams, Last Ports (April 2022))
“Beninga’s images create an intense atmosphere in which the viewer is confronted with irritations, uncertainties and mysteries of the ego and being.”
(From the catalogue text about Leo Beninga for the Note! group exhibition organized by the Hamburg Galleries Association in the Stadthöfen/ Palaishof (July/August 2021))
“Again and again Beninga leads the viewer into fields related to the dream or waking dream, invites them to a walk through inner landscapes and confronts them with his painful and at the same time absurdly beautiful poetry. Beninga’s works often act as an invitation to search for traces, which can also lead into the borderlands of the abyss and intoxication.”
(From the artist information in the catalogue for the 18 Years of the Galerie beim Schlump group exhibition (April-July 2021))
“Leo Beninga’s fantasies and intuitions about hidden realities aren’t so much reflected in a precise and often sober fantastic realism, but develop from a gestural-abstract painting act of great sensuality.”
(Sara Sophie Schmalenbach in the catalogue for Beninga’s The Infinite Animal exhibition in Bremen (September 2020))
“In his pictures, Beninga engages with trauma and hope, nightmares and easier awakenings, overcoming and coping, escape and the return ticket into the self.”
(Christine Besselmann in the catalogue for Beninga’s The Hidden Day exhibition in Vienna (May/June 2019))
“Beninga experiments with happenstance, creating designs with an unconventional and uncontrolled approach, sometimes with a brush, sometimes by hand, sometimes with a knife, tints, whitewashes, spatulas, scratching through the different layers of his painting surface, letting tusche and ink flow over the sheet, creating alleyways within the tangle, inextricable entanglements, paths into the souterrain.”
(From the exhibition announcement for Beninga’s first solo exhibition, entitled From the Basement to the Souterrain (December 2017/January 2018) at the Galerie beim Schlump in Hamburg.)