FROM METRO LONDON:
“TO THINK OF SOMETHING” PEERS INTO ANOTHER WORLD
Manfredi Beninati’s ‘To Think Of Something’
This year’s Biennial is at its best when you stumble across things you were not expecting. During the day, you could easily walk past Manfredi Beninati’s piece without even realising it’s there.
A small panel indicates its existence but, surrounded by posters, it doesn’t stand out. The crowds of people that gather around to peer inside are the only giveaway. Two small windows have been cut out of the plywood board covered in fly-posters, which stands on the corner of Renshaw Street and Leece Street.
Looking in and behind the facade of the abandoned building, you’ll see the living room of, what looks like, an affluent family’s apartment. Toys and painting materials lie around the carpet as if they’ve been recently abandoned and a door is slightly ajar at the back, showing a dining room.
It feels as if you’re peering into a different world and, though this could effectively be nosing around somebody else’s home, the unoccupied room is so homely that it doesn’t feel voyeuristic or uncomfortable.
The fashions used help to reinforce the impression of peering into somebody’s childhood. It’s a pleasant and rewarding experience during the day, when you have to work hard to see everything through the sun’s glare. The only real shame is that in the evening the light is so bright the installation glows like a Christmas tree.
Until Nov 30, Renshaw Street, Liverpool, daily 24 hours, free. Tel: 0151 709 7444. www.biennial.com
INSTALLATION AT LIVERPOOL BIENNIAL 2008
“To view the installation by Italian Manfredi Beninati you have to look through a window punched through the wall of a derelict building in the city centre. Standing there in the cold and dark, you are confronted with a vision of complete human happiness — a brightly lit drawing room with comfortable sofa and chairs, carpets, books, flowers, and a view through the window onto a tropical sunset. Newspapers and toys, a dolls’ house, and the tools dad is using to build a toy theatre lie scattered on the floor. But just as you are taking all this in, something moves and for the first time you notice the sinister figure looking in at the scene from the other the direction.
It takes a split second to realise that what you are seeing is your own reflection in the mirror hanging on the back wall. Beninati neatly demonstrates what it must be like to be on the outside looking in - to see comfort, warmth, love, and security but not to be a part of it. Wonderful.”
Richard Dorment / The Daily Telegraph ©
To Think of Something, 2008
Manfredi Beninati
Commissioned by Liverpool Biennial International 08
Photography by Adatabase. The Daily Telegraph
SOME PICS FROM LIVERPOOL
“Dear Manfredi and Tina
We have not met before, I am Michelle Sadgrove. Last Friday while in Liverpool for the Biennial I took some pics I thought you might like.
My best wishes,
Michelle”
photos below, by Michelle Sadgrove © 
“… Some of them are not at all easy to find. In fact, it’s often a game of hide and seek. A couple of doors along from Mersey Collectables – the decrepit sign tells us that they are crying out for “Dinky, robots and tin toys” – I spot a curiously well-polished square of window glass framed by posters for local rock bands, local soft porn opportunities, local roulette – there’s a casino just along the road. A couple of men in black, wearing artfully red-framed spectacles, are already staring in. Art critics – or I’m a brass monkey. I wait – then do the same. It’s a tranquil make-believe scene just behind that window. A large, dolls’-house-size chateau sits in the middle of the floor. An unnaturally large, spot-lit tree is growing inside what looks like a large vitrine. This tranquil world of make-believe, amid all the scruff and the teem of Renshaw Street, is the work of Manfredi Beninati.”
Michael Glover / The Independent
“… Manfredi Beninati’s work is very easily missed. I wandered up and down Renshaw Street for several minutes looking for it, until a helpful Biennial volunteer directed me towards a tiny peephole in a hoarding covered with flyposters for lap-dancing clubs and escorts services. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be observed in a public street, peering through a gap in an advertisement for the Pussycat Dolls: but I expect this is all part of Beninati’s concept, which is something to do with unsatisfied longings and voyeurism…”
Alfred Hickling / The Guardian
“…Peer through the window of an abandoned, burnt out house in the city centre and see a comfortably furnished middle class apartment, complete with breakfast remnants, half-read newspaper and unexpected sunset, intricately designed by Italy’s Manfredi Beninati. “
David Smith / The Observer
WORKS FOR UPCOMING SOLO AT MAX WIGRAM GALLERY
snapshots of some of the works on display at Max Wigram Gallery in London from september the 4th.
“IN AN EMPTY GLASS”
From the Liverpool Biennial’s catalog
The folllowing is a little novella i wrote for the catalog of the Liverpool Biennial.
AFTER ANTONELLO DA MESSINA
Snapshots of an installation I almost completed at villa Rufolo in Ravello, before I had to walk out of the event.
PARRISH MUSEUM, SOUTHAMPTON (N.Y.)
“All things are from the ocean”, installation, June 2008
…and … MAKING OF
