Mario Bencomo: Visual Poetry

LnS Gallery - Miami

By Raisa Clavijo

Last spring, LnS Gallery presented “Visual Poetry,” a selection of works by Mario Bencomo, an artist residing in Miami. The series assembles an extensive collection of works in which he linked his particular visual language with the poetry of various authors who have been relevant to his creative evolution.

In a recent conversation in his studio, he shared with me that one of the first pieces in this series was perhaps a painting on canvas based on Memories of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar, in which he included a handwritten fragment of the poem. This was followed by a piece inspired by the original Spanish version of Insular Night: Invisible Garden by Cuban José Lezama Lima.

The exhibition at LnS included works on paper, notably Ode to Whitman, Homage to Lorca, Poet in New York, (2013). Bencomo became acquainted with New York as an adolescent in the 1960s when he arrived as an unaccompanied minor from Spain, where he had been living as a Cuban émigré. Later on, Bencomo got to know the work of Federico García Lorca while attending high school in Miami. He was fascinated by Poet in New York, the book of poems that the Spanish author wrote during his visit to the great city between 1929 and 1930. Lorca’s poem, Ode to Walt Whitman, led him to Leaves of Grass by the English author. Since then, Whitman and Lorca have resonated in his work.

Mario Bencomo, Ode to Whitman, Homage to Lorca, Poet in New York, 2013, acrylic and ink on paper, 38” x 50.5.” Courtesy Ana M. Bermúdez Collection, the artist and LnS Gallery. © Mario Bencomo.

Since the beginning of his career in the 1970s, Bencomo has experimented with various artistic languages like Abstract Expressionism and Conceptualism, later concentrating on figuration following the forms of nature of the kind inspired by Cubism and Expressionism. His interest in natural forms dates back to his childhood, when he copied images from botanical books and reproduced the names in Latin. This careful observation of nature revealed to him that its capricious forms can become ambiguous when decontextualized and can serve as inspiration for constructing visual metaphors. “I am interested in the beauty of ambiguity in art and poetry,” Bencomo says. “As a painter, I understand the quality of being open to more than one pictorial representation, not ambivalence or vagueness. I often paint images that can be interpreted in more than one way.”

In a conversation at his studio, Bencomo admonished: “Every good solution recurs.” To be precise, he has known how to opt for the wise choices that have proved successful in his work at different times during his career; the combination of images and language is one of them. His use of this resource dates back to his childhood and adolescence, when he created illustrated notebooks in which drawings and poems converged in natural harmony. Throughout his career, he has developed and perfected an alphabet of symbols that have shaped his pictorial language.

In the works assembled in “Visual Poetry,” fragments of poems and personal reflections coexist with compositions containing capricious and sensual forms, rich precisely due to their clever simplicity. Each piece refers to an author, to the fragment of a poem, summarizing the interpretation that the artist makes of his experiences and the historic events that he has witnessed throughout his life.

Through “Visual Poetry,” the viewer is invited to revisit the work of the immortal  poets like García Lorca, José Martí, José Lezama Lima, Arthur Rimbaud, Marguerite Yourcenar, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, C. P. Cavafy, Walt Whitman and Severo Sarduy, to mention just a few of the authors honored in this series. Bencomo draws us near to their legacy and presents us with a scenario from which to embark upon a memorable voyage, enabling us to construct our own experience.

(April 2 - May 25, 2019)

Raisa Clavijo is the editor-in-chief of ARTPULSE. She is an art historian, critic and curator based in Miami. Clavijo has a B.A. in art history from the University of Havana and a master’s degree in museum studies from the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. Former chief curator at Museo Arocena in Mexico (2002-2006), she founded Wynwood: The Art Magazine, in Miami, where she worked as editor from 2007 to 2009. In 2009, she founded ARTPULSE and ARTDISTRICTS magazines.