Myles Bennett: The Thin Line

Myles Bennett is a versatile artist based in Brooklyn, working across painting, drawing, apparel, and sculpture. His artistic interests lie at the crossroads of architectural drawings, 18th-century landscape paintings, and the structured space of woven and raw canvas. He delves into the personal scale of construction and materiality, exploring the interplay between gesture and the inherent qualities of surfaces.

His creative process spans various techniques and mediums, from figurative paintings to sculpture, photography, minimalist and maximalist drawings, and forms of abstraction. Bennett's work engages with the historical significance of ‘the canvas’ in art, from its traditional use as a surface for painting to its exploration as a standalone medium. He questions and redefines the notion of the picture plane, experimenting with different treatments of canvas, such as leaving it bare, painting it entirely white or black, gridding it with graphite, and incorporating its texture and structure into the artwork.

Whether he's drawing lines along the canvas grain, inking into the cotton fibers, or meticulously manipulating the canvas's warp while leaving the weft behind, Bennett's approach seeks to merge his artistic inquiries with the inherent characteristics of the surface. His works aim to strike a balance between his explorative processes and the conditions of the canvas, resulting in a dynamic interplay of form, texture, and aesthetic expression.