Benedetto Mehdi (°1973, Tunisia, Tunisia) makes sculptures, sculptures and performances. With the use of appropriated materials which are borrowed from a day-to-day context, Mehdi tries to increase the dynamic between audience and author by objectifying emotions and investigating the duality that develops through different interpretations.
Mehdi creates situations in which everyday objects are altered or detached from their natural function. By applying specific combinations and certain manipulations, different functions and/or contexts are created. Through a radically singular approach that is nevertheless inscribed in the contemporary debate, he presents everyday objects as well as references to texts, painting and architecture. Pompous writings and Utopian constructivist designs are juxtaposed with trivial objects. Categories are subtly reversed.
His works are an investigation of concepts such as authenticity and objectivity by using an encyclopaedic approach and quasi-scientific precision and by referencing documentaries, ‘fact-fiction’ and popular scientific equivalents. By examining the ambiguity and origination via retakes and variations, he reflects on the closely related subjects of archive and memory. This often results in an examination of both the human need for ‘conclusive’ stories and the question whether anecdotes ‘fictionalise’ history.
His works are a drawn reflection upon the art of sculpture itself: thoroughly self-referential, yet no less aesthetically pleasing, and therefore deeply inscribed in the history of modernism – made present most palpably in the artist’s exploration of some of the most hallowed of modernist paradigms. By using an ever-growing archive of found documents to create autonomous artworks, he uses references and ideas that are so integrated into the process of the composition of the work that they may escape those who do not take the time to explore how and why these images haunt you, like a good film, long after you’ve seen them.
His works never shows the complete structure. This results in the fact that the artist can easily imagine an own interpretation without being hindered by the historical reality. Benedetto Mehdi currently lives and works in Tunisia / LA SOUKRA.
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