Cuaderno de bitácora

Matthew Benedict

September 11th – October 31th

‘Cuaderno de bitácora’, the new exhibition by New York artist Matthew Benedict in Madrid, addresses a series of stories with nautical and coastal themes, as its title indicates. But beyond its obvious maritime connotations, the title also suggests a personal notebook, akin to a diary, into which the artist pours his memories, interests and fondness for history, mythology and literature. Ultimately, it is a pictorial diary.

Benedict ‘writes’ with his paintings, presenting us with fragments of an incomplete story that the viewer must reconstruct. It is the narrative drive that motivates him. His graphic, deliberately flat pictorial style supports this idea, with compositions reminiscent of 19^(th)-century illustration or didactic painting. His gouache paintings on wood or paper are conceived as visual stories. In terms of documentation, Benedict works with archives, old photographs, testimonies and elements of American popular iconography, although his approach is far from purely documentary.

Provincetown is both the main setting and the conceptual axis that structures most of the works in the exhibition. This coastal enclave may not be familiar to the viewer due to its small size. Situated at the tip of Cape Cod, a long peninsula extending into the Atlantic from the New England coast, Provincetown is closely tied to Benedict’s origins, as his ancestry is from that region.

However, Provincetown occupies a prominent place within both American history and the country’s collective imagination, as we shall see. Today, it is renowned not only for its past as a fishing village and artists’ colony, but also for embodying a convergence of eras and meanings.

In the 19th century, it began to attract painters and writers, and it eventually became the oldest artists’ colony in America. In the 20th century, it welcomed playwrights and actors, and it is considered the birthplace of modern American theatre. Today, tourism is its main industry, and it is also a landmark for LGBTQ+ communities around the world, who find in this place natural beauty and social freedom.

Throughout this exhibition, which comprises nine works, the history of America, familiar maritime landscapes, 19th-century legends, mythological beings, the ruins of coastal architecture and personal experiences intertwine. Mostly executed during the 2010s, some pieces are painted on wood, while others are sketches on paper for larger-scale projects that the artist never completed.

With this exhibition, Matthew Benedict returns to Madrid, fourteen years after his previous successful show with our gallery.