Flowers Cars, 2017.
6817 Melrose Los Angeles

Exhibition Press Release:

Benjamin Barretto’s FLOWERS CARS comprises a selection of the artist’s collages from 2012-2016.

Appropriating images from books documenting exotic cars, concept cars, flower arranging and floral still life, Barretto augments found photographs into sculptural studies.

Drawn to these subjects for their inherent sculptural qualities, both natural and manufactured, and recognizing the photographs inability to accurately represent the nuances of the object it is describing, Barretto challenges the limitations of two-dimensional representation by reconfiguring fragments of the image, contorting its original format.

While the process of collage usually brings multiple images together, Barretto simply slices and inverts segments of each singular photograph, deconstructing and reconstructing his subjects with nothing but the image itself. This simple gesture renders complex results: the original subject collapses in on itself and is rebuilt with new angles and contours. The stylized nostalgia of the source material recalling a time when our relationship with images was more tactile than that of the present.

As an ongoing series of the artist's, these small-format collage works provide relief from the more arresting qualities of Barretto’s sprawling installation, sculpture and video works. They offer an opportunity to zoom in on the artist’s relationship to materials, or more precisely, his refusal to accept their intended resolution. Mirrored throughout Barretto’s practice is this desire to disrupt the stability of materials, forms and ideas, exposing their vulnerabilities through simple gestures.

Benjamin Barretto (b. 1985 in Perth, Australia) currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. He graduated with a BA from Curtin University in 2010 and was awarded Honors in 2011 during which time he was a visiting scholar at the École Nationale Supérieur d’Art in Dijon, France.