benji grignon: stallion song
121.9 x 76.2 cm
Entering the sublime describes the moment when beauty exceeds our reasoning. In classical and Romantic philosophy, it is an encounter with an overwhelming and destabilizing force. The sublime is found in storms, wild animals, and god: phenomena that cannot be fully possessed by human perception.
The paintings in Benji Grignon’s stallion song are incarnations. His divine figures – a menagerie of beasts – emerge from storms and turbulence. We are witnesses to the birth of god in all its attendant beauty and terror. The figures appear with such electric self-assertion that Grignon seems a conduit for their powerful desire to become form. Some surfaces resemble animal skins, suggesting they are made and remade out of themselves. Or perhaps they are like Balaam’s donkey, whose mouth was opened by the Lord to speak; instead of an animal given a voice for the ears of man, the work speaks through the body – the pure animal body – made divine.
Investigating painting through inspirations such as Shaker gift drawing, the work of George Stubbs and Eugène Delacroix, and cave paintings, Grignon composes paintings that seem to create themselves. They are whispers of spirit; unlabored, confident and charged with the urgent, uncontainable force of life.
