BENKA | Virtual Insanity
2. September – 22. October 2021
BENKA born in Abu Dhabi in 1983, moved to Vienna when he was 12 years old and consequently spent all of his school year here. After finishing school, he studied clinical psychology, while also focusing on his music. Yet he has always had a passion for visual art, which first manifested when he painted on the walls of his parents' apartment. Since 2015 he has devoted himself entirely to painting. He finds inspiration in works by Cy Twombly, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Pierre Soulages and Katherine Bernhardt.
The daily use of constant preoccupation with smartphones and the potential risk of an associated addiction are based on the artist's thesis in the field of clinical psychology. The fascination for this social phenomenon and rapidly increasing rate of digitization inspired him to engage with the theme artistically. BENKA wants to question the interaction with artificial intelligence, social media and the robotization in his art and thus start a discourse on necessity and use.
The numbers and letters in his paintings are captchas. A captcha is a test that protects websites from so called bots. These tests are intended to distinguish whether the user is a person or a machine. The captchas are reinterpreted by BENKA and in his art they become a tool of artistic debate.
The large format of the canvas and the use of different materials are characteristic of his work - he mixes acrylic, oil, pastel and spray paints on one canvas. However, the starting point in every work is formed by the predetermined numbers and letters (captchas) in the picture. Afterwards the free brushwork, disorder and abstraction come into the picture. He himself describes his art as "organic chaos". In our exhibition VIRTUAL INSANITY we show a comprehensive insight into the work of the artist and his criticism of the virtual madness of our time.
