Frank Benson, Mark Grotjahn, Matt Johnson
Hydra Workshop | Greece
July 23 – September 30, 2011
For summer 2011, the Hydra Workshops are presenting new sculpture and painting by three American artists — Frank Benson, Mark Grotjahn and Matt Johnson — in the thirteenth annual exhibition mounted on the island by patron Pauline Karpidas with the support of Panos Karpidas.
Frank Benson’s Human Statue (Jessie), 2011 depicts a woman in a designer dress and vintage sunglasses, her pose mirroring the shape of a vase at her feet. Benson has described the combination of clothes and posture as “at once classical and totally contemporary”. This interplay of modernity and classicism was reflected in the work’s realization: it was designed digitally using photographic scans of the model, Jessie, before being painstakingly fabricated directly from the 3D model in traditional materials. Human Statue (Jessie) follows a hyper-realistic sculpture of a nude male, Human Statue, 2009, but it departs from the trompe l’oeil exactitude of this earlier work, giving primary emphasis to the colors and textures of its materials. The head and limbs have been cast in light-hued bronze approximating the model’s flesh. Black Belgian stone digitally carved by a mason in Carrara has been used for the black dress and plinth. The sunglasses have been milled from solid bronze and the vase has been cast directly from an existing ceramic vessel.