Frank Benson, Mark Grotjahn, Matt Johnson Hydra Workshops, Hydra, Greece Opening 23 July 2010

For summer 2011, the Hydra Workshops are presenting new sculpture and painting by three American artists – Frank Benson, Mark Grotjahn and Matt Johnson – in the thirteenth annual exhibition mounted on the island by patron Pauline Karpidas with the support of Panos Karpidas.

Frank Benson’s Human Statue (Jessie) (2011) depicts a woman in a designer dress and vintage sunglasses, her pose mirroring the shape of a vase at her feet. Benson has described the combination of clothes and posture as “at once classical and totally contemporary”. This interplay of modernity and classicism was reflected in the work’s realisation: it was designed digitally using photographic scans of the model, Jessie, before being painstakingly fabricated directly from the 3D model in traditional materials. Human Statue (Jessie) follows a hyper-realistic sculpture of a nude male, Human Statue (2009), but it departs from the trompe l’oeil exactitude of this earlier work, giving primary emphasis to the colours and textures of its materials. The head and limbs have been cast in light-hued bronze approximating the model’s flesh. Black Belgian stone digitally carved by a mason in Carrara has been used for the black dress and plinth. The sunglasses have been milled from solid bronze and the vase has been cast directly from an existing ceramic vessel.

Mark Grotjahn’s triptych in oil and colour pencil Untitled (CR SL CY LY and Cream Butterfly with Eyes Drawing in Three Parts DO NOT SEPARATE 41.96), part of his ongoing Butterfly series, offsets the figuration of the sculptures with a mode of abstraction that is dually geometric and gestural. In each section of the triptych, a striped ‘horizon line’ bisects the page from top to bottom, while red, yellow and black stripes fan out kaleidoscopically on each side. The two halves of each image appear fractionally misaligned, as if the bands originate from (or meet at) separate vanishing points. The resulting sense of dislocated perpective recalls the spatial conceits and multiple vanishing points common in paintings during, and since, the Renaissance. Each page has been scored across with flecks of colour and expressive arcs and circles resembling eyes, which beguilingly subvert the overriding illusion of space.

Classical paradigm explicitly informs Matt Johnson’s sculptures of the goddesses Artemis and Athena. Cast from female models striking classical poses, the works continue the series Object of Antiquity which Johnson began last year with a similar sculpture of Aphrodite. The figures been artificially corroded and riddled with holes in order to mimic ancient statues salvaged from the sea, like the famous Artemision Bronze (thought to be of the god Poseidon or Zeus); Johnson has suggested the objects might be the “cargo of a ship sunk in the Aegean”. Artemis’s outstretched arm directly recalls that of the Artemision Bronze – poised to throw a long-lost missile. Athena’s stance is reminiscent of the archaic Greek kórē or kouros, with one foot planted in front of the other. Her right arm gestures towards the heavens while her left points at the earth, deliberately recalling the antithetical poses of Plato and Aristotle in Raphael’s painting The School of Athens (1510) (in which these philosophers personify two divergent strands, cosmological and emprical, of classical philosophy).

Frank Benson was born in 1976. Recent solo shows have taken place at Taxter and Spengemann, New York (2011) and Sadie Coles HQ, London (2009). He lives and works in New York.

Mark Grotjahn was born in 1968 in Pasadena, California. He received his MFA from the University of California, Berkeley, and his BFA from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Recent solo shows include ‘Untitled (Dancing Black Butterflies)’ at Portland Art Museum, Portaland (OR), USA (2010). The artist lives and works in Los Angeles.

Matt Johnson was born in 1978 in New York, and has exhibited internationally. Recent solo projects include show at Alison Jacques Gallery, London, and Matt Johnson: Super Systems at Taxter and Spengemann, New York. He lives and works in Los Angeles.