Originally specialising in Marketing and Business Administration in the Basque country, Beñat took a chance on his passions and moved to the UK where he has recently graduated from City and Guilds with a MA degree in Fine Art.
Today, Beñat places a strong focus on form and composition within an expressionist painting style. Reconnecting to his past, he uses a variety of mediums to create his tonally varied monochromatic canvases. The gestural mark-making that we can see here is reflective of the shapes and shadows of the natural world captured by a combination of thick acrylic paint, dirt, charcoal and pencil.
Rich in texture, Beñat’s pieces echo organic and architectural formations that are used to map out the intimate moments stored in his memory. There is a strong theme of reuniting the present with the past in Beñat’s canvases – he places great importance on the compositions of his works to recall to him aspects of his life that have been lost to time. In order to trace back and remember these memories, Beñat refuses to depict any literal representations of form or fixed visual explanations of his thought process – this allows for an intimate yet protected relationship with the viewer as his memories shall remain his alone whilst simultaneously inviting us in to share the journey with him.
A new canvas from Beñat's studio.
As a means to explore the unknown parts of his mind, Beñat’s work is unplanned and expresses his personal language through the visual logic of impulsive mark-making. This means that Beñat’s work is immediate and is a reflection of how his emotions were fluctuating in that moment of creation in his studio.
Beñat has taken part in numerous group exhibitions around the UK and has presented solo shows in Barcelona, Switzerland and London.
For more information, please email info@rhodescontemporaryart.com
