Cherie Benner Davis

Righty-Tighty, Loosey-Goosey

For this exhibition Cherie Benner Davis will engage in a one-day, performative painting session in the exhibition space at PØST. For a period of five hours (from 2:00 - 7:00 p.m.) Benner Davis will work on 5 pre-painted, tightly-composed, paintings which she will “undo” to varying degrees, by overpainting using a variety of “loose” painting techniques. She will “break” with her own ingrained tendencies in order to reinvent, to start again. At the completion of the five-hour painting period, the paintings will be hung on the wall in whatever state they exist, and she will host a reception for guests.

How does one undo one’s own impulses for perfection?
Over the years and the course of several bodies of work, there is at least one glaringly evident aspect about my work: I have a distinct propensity for making laborious, clean, perfectly organized and designed compositions. It doesn’t matter how long a piece might take, I will strive to make it right, to make it my version of perfect. While making this outwardly, so-called “perfect” work I have, at the same time, been engaged in a process of taking stock, acknowledging and by necessity, relinquishing some of those perfectionist tendencies that exist in my everyday life — a process I might describe as a liberating necessity.

In the spirit of the Kamikaze exhibition concept, one artist per night for 30 nights, as well as this summer’s PØST exhibition Erased, I take this opportunity to work against myself, to undermine my tendency toward artistic perfectionism and in the process, to liberate and possibly reinvigorate my own approach toward artistic production.
(Cherie Benner Davis)