ness. We can see emerging bodies of paintings, in which everything is written in the name (language), underlined with blood and sealed with a fingerprint. The paintings are also literary, for the artist likes exploring the symbolism of signs and letters, the etymological meanings of names, and he creates collages (black and white collages on poplar wood wall modules and empty shoe boxes), he looks for structures in this world and tries to feel the world’s pulse which he splashes with his heartfelt blood and a spot of red, orange and saffron, in all the various shades of yellow that we can experience in his ambivalent symbolism. The artist’s gestures carry a similar weight to the colours and forms in the structure of the painting’s body. His gestures are spontaneous and they draw the sublimation of reality, which is simultaneously a memory as well as a ghost of time. His strokes made with a brush or a pen, the random shapes of the tear outs (from paper and other materials), which he includes in the surfaces, are the most recognisable component of his painting fields, they are the ornament of his spiritual weaving, which is captured by the colourful accentuations and meanings. They are patterns of harmonious structures, conceptual writings and meaningful signs. A special spiritual atmosphere prevails across the paintings: the merging black and white adds to the prevailing grey mists; the greyness is the most human colour due to its middle value of colour tonality. And what are creativity and our encounters with works of art, if not an act for mankind, for our humanity?! We can always find a response when falling into a work of art, thus I am prolonging an invitation to step into Benétik’s paintings-bodies, into these fields of his insights. Literature: Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant: Dictionary of Symbols, (the Slovene language edition published by Mladinska knjiga, Ljubljana, 1993)
Bòb, mešana tehnika na vezani plošči, kolaž Horsebean, mixed media on hardboard, collage Pferdebohne, Mischtechnik auf Hartfaserplatte, Collage 185, 2 × 88 × 4, 2 cm, 2018