PREMATURE is a fine art photography project where the aesthetic power of the artist’s original paintings is enhanced through the mean of photography. The union between these two different media creates an outcome that immortalizes the freshness of each painting and enhances its details, making the photography of the artwork the final piece that stands on its own.
Even if the creative process was born without a voluntary inspiration to the Rorschach tests, it belongs to the klecksography technique which is the art of making images from inkblots, pioneered by Justinus Kerner since the second half of the XIX century and soon after used by the famous psychoanalyst. Indeed, a PREMATURE artwork could be defined as an inverted and augmented Rorschach test, with colors spreading onto a black background and the structure of the textures layered or smoothed for creating a much more three-dimensional effect.
The complexity of the forms is the structural factor that mainly differentiates the PREMATURE project from the Rorschach tests, but it is also the different role given to the painting and to the photo-print within the creative context that constitutes a crucial aspect to take into consideration. Indeed, the PREMATURE project could be related to the photo-secession movement because of the aim of narrowing the distance between photography and painting.
Whereas the photo-secessionists used the camera and the post-chemical development as a mean to emulate the aesthetic of a painting, each PREMATURE artwork has an original painting as the sole subject, where the shooting of the artwork becomes an unavoidable part of the creative process in order to create the piece. The artwork is photographed when the paint still wet, making the painting eternally fresh and highlighting the details of the textures, all made possible only by the use of photography.
Giovanni De Benedetto
Artist statement: I am a klecksography artist who enhances the aesthetic power of his own original paintings through the mean of photography. The union between these two different media creates an outcome that highlights certain features that otherwise they would be hide, making the photography of the artwork the final piece that stands on its own. My aim is to broaden the people’s points of view, making them embrace multiple perspectives at the same time in order to establish a temporary emphatic connection among them for feeling more close as human beings on a deep level. Given all the psychological and social dynamics involved in the viewing of my work, the artworks gain the attention of such professionals who work with the human mind and subconscious, such as psychotherapists and criminologists, as well as art collectors.
Exhibition / Publications / Awards: Main Exhibitions: PULSE! Art Fair, Miami Beach, USA – coGalleries, Berlin, Germany – “The Man’s Art”, Venezia, Italy –
Biography: Giovanni De Benedetto is an Italian klecksography artist who combines painting and photography at once. His projects have multiple points of view and the observers are an active part of the creative process, where each artwork has been made to shake the spectator from the inside. Starting from 2012 he took part in several solos and collective exhibitions with his main project PREMATURE, exhibiting in cities like Venice, Paris, Miami Beach, Berlin, and Bangkok. In 2019, he was selected for the 4-month artist residency program at coGalleries in Berlin which culminated with his first solo exhibition in the German capital at the gallery located in Berlin-Mitte. Furthermore, his artwork PREMATURE #77 was chosen by the fair director Cristina Salmastrelli to be exhibited at the prestigious PULSE Art Fair in Miami Beach during the Miami Art Week as part of The Next Generation of artists in the contemporary panorama. In 2020 he started to work together with the art dealer Matteo Sormani from Art-Preview, the Emerging Artist Platform from Hansford & Sons Fine Art based in London, and Ungalleried based in Lisbon, where all these galleries offer different artworks from the PREMATURE series. De Benedetto is also featuring in several art magazines like Art Market Magzine and Dodho Magazine and he has been selected to be featured on the cover of the third issue of Al-Tiba9 Magazine with 10 pages-article and an interview of him.