Stare into those early drawings long enough—rife with moiré patterns and forms of interference, they have the air of jammed signals, failed communiques to someone or something that was probably never willing to connect in the first place—and you'll see which way the wind is blowing: toward the cows. And with them, the copters and the aliens.
He's said that he learned to embrace “making a mess.” The drawings collected here attest to the great care with which he's dismantled our reality. He's climbed inside the helicopter, assumed control of the psychopter within, and piloted the whole contraption into the ground—tracking a signal audible only to those who would drown it in noise.
Dan Piepenbring
Steve DiBenedetto (born 1958 in Bronx, lives and works in New York) studied at Parsons School of Design alongside Steven Parrino in the 1980s. His practice has evolved over the years from linear geometric abstractions linked (tangentially) to the Neo-Geo movement and characterized by blocks of colour, to thickly layered paintings and drawings populated by organic and mechanic forms, octopi, helicopters, Ferris wheels and, more recently, architecture.
