{"id":84872,"date":"2015-04-16T19:54:33","date_gmt":"2015-04-16T23:54:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=84872"},"modified":"2015-04-17T11:12:06","modified_gmt":"2015-04-17T15:12:06","slug":"headshrinker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/04\/16\/headshrinker\/","title":{"rendered":"Headshrinker"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_84874\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/3-18-15_15-1000.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-84874\" class=\"wp-image-84874\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/3-18-15_15-1000.jpg\" alt=\"3-18-15_15-1000\" width=\"600\" height=\"664\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/3-18-15_15-1000.jpg 903w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/3-18-15_15-1000-271x300.jpg 271w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-84874\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Steve DiBenedetto, <i>Reverse Epiphany<\/i>, 2015, oil on linen, 20&#8243; x 18&#8243;.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>If Thomas Pynchon writes systems novels, Steve DiBenedetto makes systems paintings\u2014paranoid, erratic, vaguely interconnected. His latest exhibition, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.derekeller.com\/exhibitions\/steve-dibenedetto\/selected-works\">Mile High Psychiatry<\/a>,\u201d up through Saturday at Derek Eller Gallery, has an air of zany premonition to it that put me in mind of Pynchon\u2019s Tyrone Slothrop, who in <em>Gravity\u2019s Rainbow<\/em> predicts rocket attacks with his erections: a carnal dowsing rod. There\u2019s some of that rollicking terror in DiBenedetto\u2019s paintings. You better figure this shit out, they seem to taunt, before your head explodes. (Fittingly, one of the more splattered numbers is called <em>We Blew It.<\/em>)<\/p>\n<p>DiBenedetto\u2019s earlier work was fixed on helicopters, Ferris wheels, and especially octopi. Those figures are still here, but abstracted, sometimes almost runic, surrounded by formidable blasts of texture and noise. <em>Take the Cannolis<\/em> and <em>Good Mystic vs. Bad Mystic vs. Tom Carvel<\/em> conjure brains on the brink of meltdown. <em>Sam Chinita <\/em>and <em>Biodynamic Radiation <\/em>have lurid pustules of color, thick enough almost to be popped, like zits. Much of the time you can talk about these paintings as you\u2019d talk about something half buried in your backyard: they seem not just encrusted but mulched in paint and grime. Even the gallery\u2019s release speaks of \u201cscraps and globs and stabs and billows,\u201d to say nothing of \u201cprelinguistic slime.\u201d That release, which I suspect DiBenedetto wrote himself with some relish, is weird enough to quote at length. He says of one painting: <!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Fumes are just being sucked back into bodies of the composition\u2019s other passengers, including one octopus. This is not a basic octopus. Basic octopi are not socialized. They forgo language for body manipulation and alterations of skin color, communicating through a state Terrence McKenna describes as \u201cboth psychedelic and telepathic.\u201d Not this guy, this octopus has a chalkboard and he\u2019s learning how to make marks on it. He\u2019s a socialized (or social-ish) octopus and with one tentacle coiled around a nub of chalk he communicates to us his intimate thoughts about the paranormal, modern architecture, and the subplots of <em>Apocalypse Now\u00a0<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>DiBenedetto has referred to Peter Halley\u2019s work as \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/bombmagazine.org\/article\/3096\/steve-dibenedetto\">cave paintings for the future<\/a>\u201d\u2014a line arguably more applicable to his own work. There\u2019s something of the Cro-Magnon in these paintings, if not the primordial ooze. Their \u201clayered and distressed surfaces,\u201d Martha Schwendener <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/04\/03\/arts\/design\/steve-dibenedetto-mile-high-psychiatry.html\">noted in the<em>\u00a0New York Times<\/em>,<\/a> \u201clend them an aura of history and authority, like archaeological objects.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In <a href=\"http:\/\/bombmagazine.org\/article\/3096\/steve-dibenedetto\">a 2008 interview with <em>BOMB<\/em><\/a>\u2014larded with such colorful questions as \u201cWhat is your relationship to the color brown?\u201d and \u201cWhat do you like about the band Anal Cunt?\u201d\u2014DiBenedetto said, \u201cI don\u2019t give a shit about making perfect, or even functioning paintings \u2026 I\u2019d like them to be simultaneously visionary, mundane, civic, and religious.\u201d The works in \u201cMile High Psychiatry\u201d succeed to that end: they\u2019re hallucinatory but tangible, unstable but deeply grounded.<\/p>\n<p><div id=\"attachment_84873\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/3-18-15_12-1000.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-84873\" class=\"wp-image-84873\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/3-18-15_12-1000.jpg\" alt=\"3-18-15_12-1000\" width=\"600\" height=\"727\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/3-18-15_12-1000.jpg 825w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/3-18-15_12-1000-248x300.jpg 248w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-84873\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Steve DiBenedetto, <i>Hails from the Abyss<\/i>, 2015, oil on linen, 20&#8243; x 16&#8243;.<\/p><\/div> <div id=\"attachment_84877\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/3-18-15_9-1000.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-84877\" class=\"wp-image-84877\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/3-18-15_9-1000.jpg\" alt=\"3-18-15_9-1000\" width=\"600\" height=\"751\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/3-18-15_9-1000.jpg 799w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/3-18-15_9-1000-240x300.jpg 240w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-84877\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><i>We Blew It<\/i>, 2015, oil on linen, 20&#8243; x 16&#8243;.<\/p><\/div> <div id=\"attachment_84875\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/3-18-15_11-1000.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-84875\" class=\"wp-image-84875\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/3-18-15_11-1000.jpg\" alt=\"3-18-15_11-1000\" width=\"600\" height=\"670\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/3-18-15_11-1000.jpg 896w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/3-18-15_11-1000-269x300.jpg 269w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-84875\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><i>Good Mystic vs. Bad Mystic vs. Tom Carvel<\/i>, 2015, oil on linen, 18&#8243; x 16&#8243;.<\/p><\/div> <div id=\"attachment_84876\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/3-18-15_8-1000.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-84876\" class=\"wp-image-84876\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/3-18-15_8-1000.jpg\" alt=\"3-18-15_8-1000\" width=\"600\" height=\"795\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/3-18-15_8-1000.jpg 755w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/3-18-15_8-1000-227x300.jpg 227w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-84876\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><i>Offers of Refusal<\/i>, 2014\u201315, oil on linen, 24&#8243; x 18&#8243;.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n<p><em>Dan Piepenbring is the web editor of <\/em>The Paris Review.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If Thomas Pynchon writes systems novels, Steve DiBenedetto makes systems paintings\u2014paranoid, erratic, vaguely interconnected. His latest exhibition, \u201cMile High Psychiatry,\u201d up through Saturday at Derek Eller Gallery, has an air of zany premonition to it that put me in mind of Pynchon\u2019s Tyrone Slothrop, who in Gravity\u2019s Rainbow predicts rocket attacks with his erections: a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2384],"tags":[16771,35,17791,1124,17792,17793,4154,12583,17790,4386],"class_list":["post-84872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-look","tag-archeology","tag-art","tag-derek-eller-gallery","tag-gravitys-rainbow","tag-martha-schwendener","tag-oil-on-linen","tag-paintings","tag-psychiatry","tag-steve-dibenedetto","tag-thomas-pynchon"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Steve DiBenedetto\u2019s Cave Paintings for the Future<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"His new show, \u201cMile-High Psychiatry,\u201d collides the hallucinatory and the earthly.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/04\/16\/headshrinker\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Headshrinker by Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"April 16, 2015 \u2013 If Thomas Pynchon writes systems novels, Steve DiBenedetto makes systems paintings\u2014paranoid, erratic, vaguely interconnected. 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