Art is not made on planet earth ft. Pablo Benzo
A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Pablo Benzo. He looks young, yet carries the wisdom of someone who had lived many lives before this one. His Berlin studio is located in a building that once served as SS offices. He said the place had been left empty for a long time as no one wanted to be in there until they made it available for studios and he moved into one of the rooms.
He has a big studio, at least for me it’s big since I’m used to painting in the corner of my bedroom. I’m sure an artist of that calibre could afford a bigger one. He’s very humble, very soft hearted and laughs easily.
We stood around the studio for ages. I asked many questions about his painting techniques, but also about life in general. When I wondered when he had started painting, he replied “I never stopped”. He seemed almost surprised by the question, since painting had always been part of his life, it was never something he had to decide on. He told me that the question is never “should I do it?”, but rather “can I not do it?”. Making art for him was inevitable.
He studied graphic design in Santiago, Chile, and began his career in advertising. During that time, he invested everything he earned into creating art, until eventually he decided to move to Berlin to be able to grow as an artist. His first exhibition here was in a cafe more than 10 years ago, and now he’s exhibiting in some of the most important galleries in the world and selling his art internationally.
For some reason, I had imagined him to be pretentious. Did I just get intimidated by the beauty of his art? In reality, he was kind and open to answer all my questions. He ran me through his process, from how he begins a painting, to the sketches, his techniques and so on. He usually starts from drawing little objects in his sketchbook looking for shapes that catch his eye, and builds from there. He works on composition and colours, lights and shadows, furniture and plants, humans just at times. He works on five paintings at once. Whenever he feels stuck on one, he shifts to another, keeping the flow alive until he can eventually go back to the previous painting with some sort of solution. This fluidity in creating was very fascinating to me, he’s like a river flowing and you can’t stop it.
He works in layers, building texture, refining shapes, and crafting color one layer at a time. He uses a lot of dry brushes, I believe that’s his signature. He always begins with lighter tones, blending oil paint with a chemical agent that speeds up the drying process. He explained that when he’s got a clear vision he needs to execute fast and can’t wait a month for the oils to dry. Also, when inspiration comes, whether that’s at 6 am or 1am, he just takes his bike and goes to the studio. I said “wow, do you bike all the way to the studio in the middle of the night?” “Well, what do you mean all the way, it’s just 30 minutes by bike”. I loved it, life is simple for Pablo.
I asked him about his intention with painting. I clarified, while painting, not before, since after talking to him for a while I assumed that before starting his intention was very simply to paint. He laughed at that. He explained that his aim is to dig deeper and deeper into himself, bringing to the canvas things he didn’t even know were there, but others can still recognize. “When you go that deep, all humans can relate and feel what you put out there, that’s the magic of art”. He talked about letting go, about tapping into the unconscious. It seems to me that the best art is not made on planet earth, it is made in a sort of parallel reality. You lose the sense of space, time, even of yourself, and you just paint. When you get to that state, you can make things you didn’t know about, you can make things you didn’t know you could make, you can make things you could never make otherwise. That state of mind is addictive and reaching it is the foundational skill an artist should practice. It sounds like meditation to me. You go beyond yourself and tap into something universal. That’s how artists become universal, I guess.
I asked whether he uses visual references, or where his inspiration comes from. He told me he draws from memory, but not memories of how things looked, memories of how things felt. He practices remembering the feeling of what he’s lived, which means he has to be fully present, both in the experience and in the recollection. I gave him some incense, he didn’t even open that little bag. I think he loved it, but he was present. He gave me his full attention for almost two hours.
We fill up our minds with so many thoughts thinking that is gonna make us smarter, but we build wisdom from lived experience. The human condition is, by definition, a felt experience; we have bodies, we sense, we feel, we live through moments. As we consider technologies that claim to do what we do, sometimes even better we must ask ourselves where to draw the line. It may sound dreamy (is it, though?) to imagine a future where we live in perfect harmony, seamlessly intertwined. But the real challenge is defining how such integration should happen, and questioning where, and in what ways, humans bring their humanity into play. Pablo might already have the answer.
