We Did Our Best
The intense gaze of two dark eyes welcomed each visitor at the Norwich Arts Centre last Tuesday into a brief gallery of faces. It was a gaze both hanging on the wall and moving throughout the space at this opening night of We Did Our Best, a new exhibition on portraiture and figurative painting by Joel Benjamin and Dean Khalil.
These eyes belonged to Benjamin’s partner – and here, also muse – who was not the only one looking at herself in the canvas as if this was a mirror; apart from a couple of self-portraits, many of the other sitters were acquaintances and friends of these young Norwich-based artists as well. Although the works did not reveal much about the relationship between artist and sitter, the latter seemed to have as much importance as the former for the resulted work. Especially in Khalil’s portraits, such as Jiane, the model seems to dominate the image as much as the artist does. Her portrait, as well as many of the others in the room, is not just a likeness of her face, a representation of how the artist sees her; instead, it goes beyond that and shows a reflection of her state of being, visible through her serious and slightly melancholic fixed stare, which along with her quite distorted jaw and bony facial features turned it into my favourite painting on display.
Wine glass on hand, everyone seemed pleased. There were little groups of people chatting, some discussing the works in pairs, or others scrutinizing the faces by themselves. There was such a relaxed atmosphere that the visitors seemed to adapt the paintings’ character: they all showed such lack of tension or aim towards introspection that the event was more like a calm get together of friends, with those on the walls included, than just a festive occasion for contemplation.
Through a wide range of sizes and an even wider palette, the works seemed to take form especially through an act of contrast: by depicting real people through layers of artificial colours occupying the whole background and isolating the figure atop, out of space and time. This style of using such intense hues reminded me to that of illustration, which Benjamin is really into and for years has created works for editorials such as Vice as well as several gig poster illustrations.
Although the space that the Norwich Arts Centre provided was not particularly remarkable – as some of the paintings were displayed in a somewhat dark extension of the main room, as if they run out of space – I left the opening satisfied and thinking about how well their art fitted together – both of them looking similar at some points but simultaneously idiosyncratic and identifiable too – about recommending the exhibition to my friends, and above all, about Jiane.
This exhibition is on daily until 12th July.
