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ArchiveBorn 1975 in New York
The hidden and unseen are recurring themes within Benjamin Cottam's paintings and drawings. In his thumbnail-sized silverpoint drawings of dead artists and half-dead celebrities, the portraits are so heavily encroached upon by the soft gray halo of erasure that they are reduced to specter-like presence, nearly disappearing within the white of the paper, mere fragments of a face.
Cottam’s Untitled black paintings first appear as minimalist squares, but, upon closer inspection, faces begin to peer back, portrait heads obscured behind deep reflective, black surfaces – nearly invisible, nearly obliterated.
In his Blue Skies diptych series, Cottam's takes his themes of the unseen and the hidden in a radical new direction. Bright, full color paintings on aluminum, turning seemingly benign, placid skies sinister with faint streaks of tear gas canisters tumbling down from above. Removed from context, these suddenly anonymous acts of violence become, like all of his work, docile and beautiful.
 Benjamin Cottam , Amy Winehouse #2, 2008, Silverpoint and Gesso on Paper, 6 x 4 inches / 15.2 x 10.1 cm |
