Will Bentsen
Hot Damn!
November 7 - December 19, 2020
Installation View: Will Bentsen, Hot Damn!
Lowell Ryan Projects is pleased to present Hot Damn!, a solo exhibition by artist Will Bentsen. This exhibition features nine acrylic paintings on canvas 72 x 60 inches in scale, all created in 2020. Bentsen's painting process involves ritualistic sessions where his fetish for materials, tools, and the act of painting are embraced and celebrated in cathartic bursts. Working on multiple paintings at once, Bentsen splashes, stains, brushes, and drags paint across the canvas' surfaces—hitting each note of color with speed, softness, and restraint manifesting in energetic riffs and chords. Will Bentsen was born in Houston, TX, and currently lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His last exhibition was at Hiram Butler Gallery, Houston, TX, in 2019.
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Lowell Ryan Projects’ owner and director, Virginia Martinsen talks to Will Bentsen about his work:
How do you start a painting?
Since I don't really paint one painting at a time, let me explain how I start a series, suite, or group, and then I'll break it down from there. First and foremost, I clean and reorganize the studio. I remember reading a De Kooning quote, which I will paraphrase.
'Sweeping and mopping the studio floor is as important to the masterpiece as is painting the picture.'
Then I stretch about 15 or 20 large canvases—enough of them to diminish the value and remove any feelings of preciousness for the materials. While doing all of this, my brain is continuously thinking about color and paint. I think about form too, but mostly about color, paint, and the act of painting. I get supercharged up during this process. I liken it to a dog on a leash trying to get at a squirrel. And then, when I can't stand it any longer, I let the leash go.
To begin an actual painting, I grab that color I've been obsessing about and go. I'll have an idea of where on the canvas I want it to live, but that's not the important part. I begin to chase that first color around either with itself or with another color until it feels right. As I'm waiting for it to dry enough to continue, I start another canvas.
How is color important?
Color is number one. An artist's use and understanding of color are why I'll walk past one painting to another in a gallery or museum or why I'll save or destroy one of my own. It's the why and the where of the color. Not the color itself, but the command and control of it. Both Helen Frankenthaler and Dorothy Hood could entice you with a shit brown or bile green like a gold-plated chocolate cake.
You mentioned your earlier addiction to drugs and alcohol, is this something that guides your thoughts in the work or your methods of thinking?
A couple of years ago, someone asked me to explain what one of my paintings meant, what I was trying to say—my statement. I tried explaining how it was purely about itself as a painting and got a look of complete confusion. So switching gears, I explained what was going on in my head as I was making it. I told them that I start with a color, making a mark or two, then chasing them around, adding color, adding marks, more color, more marks, more color. That I sort of go into a trance (hate that fucking word), a zone (hate that phrase too), and when I come out, there's a record of that event in that painting. I'm conscious and fully aware of what I'm doing. It's not like magic or anything. You know when you're sitting in traffic, and you realize you don't know where your brain or thoughts have been for the last 20 minutes? Like that. On a good painting day, it's this space of true nothingness and absolute everything all at once. I told them that all I want to do is get back to that place when I come out. At that very moment, I realized that most of my adolescence and up into my early 40s was spent trying to find that space through chemicals. It's a form of escapism. I am not escaping from something but into something.
There is a sense of immediacy and movement in your work. How is time a factor? How long does it take you to make a painting?
Immediacy is key. Start to finish a painting usually takes a couple of hours. However, as I mentioned before, I work on a few pieces at a time, so it's more like a session. I hate going back to a painting the next day because I end up murdering the previous day's work more often than not.
Do you feel the need to contend with art history, or is it irrelevant now?
I don't necessarily feel the need to contend. Still, because I'm aware of the history before me and excited by understanding my heroes and how they worked, it's an unavoidable act.
