From Pain to Color

 

I have undertaken the task of reconstructing images of pain and despair into new expressions of hope and beauty. For the Natural Disaster Color series, I've devised color schemes based on disasters such as the Haiti earthquake, landslides in Brazil, or the tsunami in Japan. 

I use colors, lines, curves and folds to transpose chaos into patterns of order. Each work is a new gaze, a thoughtful reflection, a subliminal reference that carefully captures the visual essence of photos and videos of natural disaster events in the 21st Century. While researching about natural disasters I encountered so many testimonies of courage, strength, of overcoming pain. The series honors our ability to turn things around, to overcome experiences that are seemly hopeless. The process of making these works is a metaphor, what I like to call a meta-experience, of the basic human longing to turn despair into hope, sickness into health, sadness into joy, darkness into light,... to let go. 

This project was initially funded by an Indiana Arts Commission Grant. I thank very much this project's supporters, private and public collectors. Your support motivates and allows me to continue to work and spread the Natural Disaster Color series' message of transformation.

Please browse this website to learn more about this project; take a look at a monograph published by the Art Museum of Greater Lafayette (Online viewing at ISSUU). If you are in or near Albuquerque, New Mexico, consider seeing the works in-person at Central Features art gallery. Nothing can replace the actual experience (learn more). 

 

Petronio Bendito

 

For additional information and works: http://www.naturaldisastercolor.net

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Contact the artist: pbendito [at] icloud.com

 

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BENDITO EXAMINES THE SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN NATURE AND HUMANS WHILE BRINGING AWARENESS TO ISSUES RELATED TO CLIMATE CHANGE, PREPAREDNESS, RESILIENCE, PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS – WITH A FOCUS ON THE NOTION OF TRANSCENDING PAIN. THE SERIES ALSO EXAMINES THE ROLE OF DIGITAL PRINTMAKING IN CONTEMPORARY ART PROCESSES. — Nancy Zastudil (writer, curator, gallerist, Central Features)