NOVEMBER 9, 2019 - JANUARY 18, 2020

MICHELLE BENOIT
Paisley through Ninigret Light

Opening Reception: Saturday, November 9, 5:00 - 7:00 PM

This winter, Pentimenti Gallery presents a solo exhibition by MICHELLE BENOIT.

Michelle Benoit’s work acts as a tangible remembering of isolated moments in time, and a way of visually capturing constant, fluid layers of experience through color and light. Her use of washes of paint on reclaimed, bulletproof plastic and wood provide the work an inherent history within its materiality. Layers of vibrant colors and transparencies react with available light to provide each piece with their own unique internal luminescence. Each composition is created in relation to the size of the fragments that she collects, with color combinations that are coded and symbolic of a past, a present, a memory, and place. For this exhibition, she will be presenting some of her largest works to date, utilizing color schemes inspired by the walls in her family home.

Benoit says of the work, “Inspiration for me is mostly drawn from the natural world where I have found physical evidence of time. I collect, record and categorize these visual signifiers with various media such as glue casts, tracings, wallpaper, sketches and photographs. Color schemes from this body of work have been extracted from the walls of my family home. Excised layers of paint, plaster and wallpaper have been removed and reworked. Each hue represents a time frame in that home, some have left vivid impressions, others are tints from inhabitants that were there before us.”

Michelle Benoit received a BFA from Rhode Island College and an MA and MFA from the University of Iowa. Her work has been exhibited at museums and institutions such as Muscarelle Museum of Art, Williamsburg, VA; Bristol Museum of Art, Bristol, RI; Harper Center for the Arts, Clinton, SC; Sarah Doyle Gallery at Brown University; Jamestown Arts Center, Jamestown, RI; New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT; and more. In addition, her work is in many public and private collections including Memorial Sloan Kettering’s’ permanent collection, The University of Iowa Museum and The Swain School of Design.

For all inquiries, please contact Pentimenti Gallery at mail@pentimenti.com or +1 215.625.9990.