Heather Bennett: Midnight Special

March 13 - June 12, 2020

St. Louis, MO — Monaco is pleased to present Midnight Special featuring St. Louis artist and Monaco member Heather Bennett.

Midnight Special focuses on a piece of common lingerie as a stand in for the female body.  The objecthood of the female body is blatently represented by this garment (its image impossible not to conjure) yet the actual body is absent.  Desire presupposes and necessitates a lack of something, satiation is only accomplished through the acquisition of that thing, and desire ceases.  The female subject emerges here through the act of drawing, of representation.  Unwilling to show, the objectified body is defiant, except in knowing.  The image becomes acknowledgement of this undeniable, involuntary bodily presence.  In installation, this acknowledgement is extravagantly curated for the viewer- matte black walls hung with baroque, iridescent drawings, part celebration part a recoil into blackness.  A spare video quotes the act of drawing in movement and in subject hints playfully at a forced fetishization.  A book accessed by the viewer while lying on their stomach on a black leather chaise lounge over a mirrored floor includes a text that also conjures the image of the female body.  This body is pulled into view by the supine reader, the spectator, left to contend with its triumph and its terror.

There is a devastation present, as well as an effusive and elaborate beauty, which hints at a truth.  Because what happens to the desired object when the desire ends?  Is it still there?  A truth rooted in contradiction, desire drenched in love and toxicity.

Courtesy of Bruno David Gallery

Work made possible through a Regional Arts Commission Support Grant

Heather Bennett earned a BA in political science and a BFA in printmaking at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, and received an MFA in painting at Hunter College, New York.  Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions including: Stephan Stoyanov Gallery, New York, NY; Eva Hober Gallery, Paris, France; Gallerie S.E., Bergen, Norway; Graffit Gallery, Varna, Bulgaria; FIAC Contemporary Art Fair, Paris, France; University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL; Forum for Contemporary Art, St. Louis, MO; LOOP Contemporary Art Fair, Barcelona, Spain; Contemporary Arts Center, Syracuse, NY and the Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE, among others.

Bennett’s work has been reviewed in varied publications, such as Artnet, Art Review Magazine, Art Press, ArtPapers, The New York Times, and Time Out New York.  Her 2014 solo exhibition in New York City was reviewed by R.C. Baker in The Village Voice, NYC and her 2017 solo exhibition the Bruno David Gallery in St. Louis was reviewed by Eileen G’Sell in Hyperallergic.  Currently, Bennett is a full- time lecturer at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, MO.