In a conversation with Seungduk Kim in 2011, Lynda Benglis described her approach to making art: ‘It is not performance. I am really involved with object making, image making: “configuration” is the word I use. It is about configuration not a figure, but with figures; it is a process of making figures. Configuration means I involve the surface and that makes a form.”[1] Benglis has continued to challenge traditional painterly and sculptural processes since she exhibited her first “fallen” paintings in the late 1960s; when her interest in the potential of materials and their ability to carry meaning confronted Pop, Minimalism and Abstract Expressionism, and demanded that less was not necessarily always more when it came to the artistic process. The survey of Benglis’ work at The Hepworth Wakefield has material process at its core and charts her career through New York, New Mexico, Ahmedabad in India and Kastellorizo in Greece. It is a kaleidoscopic exploration of nature, gender and iconography; framed by explosions of fleshy mounds and pops of coloured glitter.
The exhibition systematises Benglis’ diverse practice into a series of rooms devoted to her chosen locales. With an array of plasmic forms in materials ranging from lead and bronze to wax, ceramic and gold leaf, Benglis’ emphasis on the malleability and diversity of matter is constant throughout. ‘Wing’ (1970) - an aluminium cast which projects from a wall like floating molasses, introduces Benglis’ concern for the snap-shot preservation of natural force. This concern to freeze material action continues with ‘Quartered Meteor’ (1969/1975) and ‘Come’ (1969-74) - two heavy lumpen bodies of lead and bronze sludge which question notions of excess and material waste. Benglis’ fascination with bodily tension and relaxation is further conveyed through her “knot” motifs. Full of tension and nervous energy, ‘Bravo’ (1972) ‘Tres’ (1976) and ‘Gamma’ (1972) evoke the convulsive hysteria of human nature, and revitalise some of the lost tension from her lava-like puddles.
The celebration and interrogation of cultural phenomena through material form reoccurs throughout the exhibition. ‘Zanzidae: Peacock Series’ (1979) - an oversized, decorative fan which Benglis made in Ahmedabad, and her “pleated” works - a series of gold, bronze and silver concertina forms made on an armature of stainless steel mesh, both recall the illusion of Baroque sculpture whilst evoking the festivity and vibrant colours employed by icon makers. Ridiculing the macho-ethos which permeated the late twentieth-century art scene, Benglis’ double-page from Artforum 1974 which features the artist posing with a double-headed dildo in a pair of cat eye sunglasses, performs a similar interrogation of social and aesthetic worth by transforming magazine-matter into a colourful carrier of meaning; simultaneously positioning Benglis as a both an active member of Feminist movement and a subject of Feminist interrogation.
All Benglis’ works perform as totems of historical memory and lived experience. Her material skins, shells and coats are revered in this exhibition which joyfully explores her ‘configuration’ of forms, and celebrates her obsessive fascination with polychromatic excess.
[1] Lynda Benglis, “Lynda Benglis and Seungduk Kim in Conversation,” in Lynda Benglis, exh. cat. (Dijon, France: Les presses du réel, 2011), 169.
