CRITICAL REFLECTION
Francisco BenÍteZ: doÑa inÉs lost her sliPPer
santa Fe coMMunitY college visual arts gallerY 6401 richards avenue, santa Fe
LOCAL SANTA FE ARTIST FRANCISCO BENÍTEZ LEADS HIS VIEWERS INTO a parallel universe in his current solo exhibition at the Santa
paper and Mylar, and the ancient technique of encaustic—she
her identity, now lost through displacement, the ramifications
Fe Community College Visual Arts Gallery. Doña Inés Lost Her
remains static; she is to be gazed upon, she is not to gaze.
of the individual impact of a large-scale cultural encounter are communicated with poetic simplicity and accessibility.
Slipper presents a series of paintings contemplating two women’s
The maidservant also suffers from the implications of gaze,
inner challenges when faced with a collision of worlds. In
yet she is more dynamic, even verging on defiant. She does not
The exhibition is well summarized in Seeing and Not
Benítez’s pictorial space, that collision occurs in a fictional realm
come from the aristocratic world in which she is now lost. Again,
Seeing, a diptych portrait of the two women, side by side.
inspired by Old World Europe and colonial America. Doña Inés,
her energy is reflected primarily through choice of media and a
On the left, Doña Inés stands facing away from the viewer.
an imagined European aristocratic woman transplanted from
painterly style that feels more engaging, modern, and vital. The
We can just barely glimpse the flesh of her neck. She is
her home and into a new world is shown in various reiterations
maid is shown in oil, but the vestiges of the Baroque, both in dress
primarily wig and costume. She is alone, impenetrable and
of portraiture alongside her unnamed American maidservant,
and style, have vanished. In fact, there is an overriding absence of
oppressed. On the right is the maidservant. In a simple white
presumably plucked from her home and people and thrust into
identity markers: Her dress is plain, her hair is simple. The style of
blouse, she stares out at the viewer directly; searching, lost,
a foreign world of service. The artist captures the complexities
painting is modernized. In State of Mind I, we see the maid’s face.
similarly oppressed, yet alive. Rather than pandering to easy
of these two individuals with a compelling and masterful use of
Setting and background are disregarded entirely. Her visage is
condemnations or didacticism about large-scale historical
disparate media, ranging from traditional oil painting to ancient
rendered in wash-like, loose brush strokes. Precise detail fleshes
conditions, Benítez contemplates the implications of the
encaustic to black-and-white photography.
out her intense eyes, confronting her viewers. This dynamic
gaze in visual representations and gives us a nuanced and
The artist cites his personal heritage as inspiration for this
is also at work in a series of photographs taken with a vintage
insightful vision of individual lives colliding.
body of work. “I spent significant amounts of time with my
1930s Kinax camera. In each of these, such as Becoming III, the
—lauren tresp
Chippewa grandmother in Taos… A major part of inspiration
subject is captured first out of focus, then each frame progresses
for this exhibition is my grandmother’s story of being sent to
until she is viewed clearly. Her eyes are always vibrant and active.
a boarding school at the age of eight, her removal from her
She sees, she is difficult to see. A photographic metaphor for
Francisco Benítez, Doña Inés in Industrial Landscape, oil on canvas, 72” x 72”, 2014
people’s land and separation from her family,” he stated in the exhibition press release. The son of a Spanish set designer and New Mexican flamenco dancer, he himself grew up in various, disparate places—New Mexico, New York, and Spain—with exposure to multiple cultures. “I felt a need to develop an exhibition that explored the complexity, challenges, and rewards that come from growing up in a multi-ethnic and cultural household… This project in a sense is a way for me to reconcile those identities.” Benítez addresses these complexities with a highly personal and accessible narrative style that smartly utilizes various media, each with subtly differing connotations and resonances. The imaging of Doña Inés, our aristocrat, is created through oil painting with a familiar yet formal historicity. The artist, having spent time in Spain, his father’s homeland, was deeply influenced by such Spanish masters as Diego Velázquez and Francisco Goya, as well as by Baroque master Caravaggio’s tenebrist style. This painterly style combined with her period costume provides viewers with a comfortable point of entry and allows us to situate Doña Inés in a distant, obsolete time and place. The artist then disrupts and challenges this easy characterization with anachronisms such as fictive industrial backdrops and incongruities like unnatural, grid-like overlays of tear drops. She is in a state of continual displacement, yet the foreignness and fracturing of her world is not expressed through her own actions or expressions. She remains politely stoic. Posing for her portraits while bearing the accoutrements of her status and place, she is an object of the world around her rather than a subject. Unenviable product of her unique constellation of time, place, and culture, she is unable and ill-equipped to adapt, grow, change, or enact her will. Even as the artist shifts between media—portraits of her span pastels, drawings on
DECEMBER/JANUARY
2014-15
the magazine | 53