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Konstantin Dmitrievich Benkovich (born 28 January 1981, Volkhov, Leningrad Oblast) is a Russian and Israeli contemporary street artist, graphic designer, and curator.

Benkovich employs metal welding and blacksmithing techniques in his works and uses reinforcing bars and steel pipes as a sculptural material. His artworks are graphic and two-dimensional due to the non-use of volume. Benkovich aims to demonstrate unfreedom, violence, and collective traumas through the desacralization of the recognizable pop culture symbols via structuring and reduction − via translating them into the “grid language”.

He is known for his works on political issues and interventions in urban space. Meanwhile, his artworks have been presented in a number of museum and gallery exhibitions, including several solo exhibitions.

In 2021, Konstantin Benkovich was included in a non-ranked list of outstanding contemporary Russian artists “Russian Investment Art Rating 49 ART”. He is included in the list of “The Best Russian Contemporary Artists” (ARTEEX).

Konstantin Benkovich's works are presented in the collections of the State Russian Museum and the Russian museum of contemporary art “Erarta”.

Early life and career
Konstantin Benkovich was born in 1981 in Volkhov, Leningrad Region. His parents, Dmitry Lvovich and Tatiana Markovna Benkovich, are teachers. Since early childhood, Benkovich was fond of sculpting and drawing, therefore from the age of 10, he attended art school. Later, he entered the Faculty of Monumental and Decorative Art at the Saint Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design and graduated with honors in 2007, specializing in artistic processing of metal.

"...In fact, this was one of the most conservative courses at the academy, yet I didn't know it then. It was my intuition that guided me in my choice. When I saw the students' and graduates' artworks, I realized that I found my passion… and this was metal. Every year at the academy we did something new: we tried our hand at jewelry making, forging, electroforming, designing, and restoration."

After graduating from the academy, Benkovich and two of his fellow students founded the “Kreativnaya kovka” (English: Creative Forging) workshop. This workshop specialized in designing and manufacturing of architectural metal, restoration. The experience gained in the workshop came in handy for Benkovich in his further artworks. He managed to combine conceptual and decorative art in his works. Benkovich continued self-education and studied the theory and history of Western art. That also helped him to achieve a higher artistic level. Visits to museums and galleries of contemporary art while traveling were now supplemented by listening to lectures and watching films about contemporary artists on the Internet. Benkovich studied postwar Western art and traced the art path of such world figures as Jeff Koons, Antony Gormley, and Damien Hirst. By doing that, he discovered some role models. Among them was a Chinese contemporary artist, Ai Weiwei, who also started as an applied artist working in animation and design, and an American artist Dan Colen, whose work consists of painted sculptures and graffiti-inspired paintings. At some point, it appeared to Konstantin that working with metal was the wrong way and he decided to pursue graphic art.

Flags and images of pop culture
Benkovich was impressed by a series of iconic works with flags made by the American pop artist Jasper Johns. That is why he turned to this subject and began to draw flags too. Soon, he decided to avoid repeating after other artists and returned to his favorite material, metal, yet in combination with graphics. Konstantin found a distinctive artistic style: he combined graphics and metal, creating two-dimensional metal works and thereby abandoning the volume. In 2014, when the crisis between Russia and Ukraine was exacerbated, Benkovich made his first work of this kind. It was a flag welded from rebar bars and painted in the colors of the Russian tricolor flag. Using rebar as the main material became another distinctive feature of the artist's works.

"I use rebar for several reasons. First of all, it's a simple and accessible material. It is quite easy to work with, which is important because I’ve set myself a limit: to spend no more than two days on one work. Secondly, it is a recognizable symbol for everyone in Russia. The material itself and the technology carry a certain meaning. Used in prison bars and fences around graves, as a handy weapon in Russia’s “wild” 1990s, rebar became our cultural code. Besides, if rebar turns out to be rusty, I keep it this way in my works."

The “Flag” project was not only an artist’s but also a political statement of Benkovich’s liberal views. In 2016, he considered flag symbols to be worthwhile in art projects and started to work on other Russian state symbols: five-pointed stars, double-headed eagles, coats of arms. The first six months, Konstantin would pile his works under the table in his studio and not show them to anyone.

Later Benkovich used his technique to make “barred” recognizable pop culture images: Gioconda, Mickey Mouse, Cheburashka, etc. All of them are represented in silhouettes making some of their essential features appear reduced. Mona Lisa is missing the notorious mysterious smile, Cheburashka retains its big ears but loses the expressive eyes, Mickey Mouse has only the head in full face. However, they are still recognizable. Besides, the artist focused on sacred images, including the Bible, Adam's skull, the Tablets of Stone, and the Star of David. Many of these images are firmly established in Benkovich’s repertoire. In particular, the barred Cheburashka became his trademark.

A standout among the images reworked by Benkovich is Jeff Koons's Balloon Dog. This work is not only widely replicated but initially represents contemporary pop art. This is where the young artist enters into a dialogue with the maestro and reconsiders the Dog’s concept in his own way.

"It turned out that it was possible to minimize this extremely laconic work and reduce it to a silhouetted grid structure... Koons played with his audience and created the image of the doggie out of pots of flowers, somehow doubling the cuteness effect. Benkovich, in contrast, played with Koons and simplified his concept to the utmost. He removed the glamour effect and drew the viewer's attention to the rusty rebar rather than to the flowers. Koons, nevertheless, stood firm: he followed the composition but was ready for variations in the performance (he replaced the corporeality with flowers, so he was not afraid that his material would be changed)."

As for the “grid flag”, Benkovich subsequently returned to this symbol on a regular basis.

Pac-Man
In February 2016, Konstantin Benkovich appeared on the streets with his first street artwork. This project was initially piled under the table as all the other of his early works. But a particular life story told by his friend provoked Konstantin to respond to another sharp rouble's fall, mortgage crisis, and the protests of currency loaners. Therefore, Benkovich bought a cordless rotary hammer, got a stepladder, put on a worker's suit, and went to one of the Sberbank branches, located almost in the center of St. Petersburg, on Gatchinskaya Street. On the facade of the building, he mounted a flat, barred figure of Pac-Man, a character from the arcade video game. Benkovich's iron Pac-Man had a similar form with the Sberbank logo, located there as well, and “devoured” the ruble sign. Despite this unambiguous statement, the installation lasted eight months, with the real Sberbank logo removed at some point, though the branch continued to work.

"This Sberbank logo “comes to life” and becomes a monstrous rouble-snatching machine... And now my cantilever sign remains there, but the Sberbank ad has been removed, although it should have been the other way around. What does that mean? A victory?"

It was the street installations that later made Konstantin Benkovich widely known.

The Scream
The Scream sculpture, which refers to Edvard Munch's painting of the same name, resonated the most among Benkovich's works. Earlier, Konstantin visited the Munch Museum in Oslo and decided to use a proven scheme: he chose one of the most iconic images of art, changed the context and meaning of the work, welded the screaming face behind a steel grid, and picked a symbolic place to display the sculpture. Then Benkovich installed his metal grid “scream”, distorted with a grimace of pain and horror, on the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge in Moscow, next to the place where an opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was killed.

"Red Square is a place of dialogue between artists and authorities. Many artists have protested in this place and have been heard. I think this is important for artists. And it seems to me that Munch's work about pain and grief fits very well here."

Benkovich spent about an hour on the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge. In his words, he saw only a positive reaction of citizens to his work. During this time, he spoke to media journalists and said that he was ready to display his artworks in public places and was not afraid of the consequences. The same day, Mikhail Kirtser, an activist at the Boris Nemtsov memorial, removed Benkovich's installation in order to preserve the history.

Boeing MH17
On July 17, 2019, Benkovich installed his “Boeing MH17” artwork on Donetsk Street in Moscow, commemorating the fifth anniversary of the crash of the Boeing 777 passenger jet in the Donetsk region. The installation was a white welded silhouette of a flying plane mounted on a yellow metal bar bent into the ground – a Buk missile that, according to the Joint Investigation Team (JIT), shot down the aircraft.

"Donetsk Street in Moscow represents a similarity with the crash site, and this barred plane is a cage from which there is no way out. Five years of disinformation and lies. Why aren't the guilty punished?"

No comments
In 2019, Benkovich “congratulated” St. Petersburg residents on the National Flag Day by installing a flying Russian tricolor flag on one of the houses on Millionnaya Street. In reply to journalists' questions, Konstantin gave a terse answer: “No comments”. This became an unofficial name of the project. Later, Benkovich explained that the choice of site for the art object near the “revolutionary” Palace Square was not random. This action was his response to severe criminal charges against Russian protesters calling for fair elections (known as the “Moscow case” or “2019 Moscow protests”).

"This work is dedicated to a shattered dream. In 1991, with the collapse of the USSR, there was a hope that people would live in a country of democracy; a country with a set of liberal values, with freedom of speech, alternation of power, a fair trial, and equality before the law. The flag was the most important symbol of change. However, thirty years later, these hopes have still not been fulfilled."

Thirty pieces of silver/The Judas Tree
In 2020, Russia adopted amendments to its constitution, allowing president Vladimir Putin to remain in power until 2036. On 16 March 2020, the Constitutional Court of Russia gave its approval to the amendments. Putin signed an executive order on 3 July 2020 to officially insert the amendments into the Russian Constitution.

On this day, Konstantin Benkovich installed another street work in St. Petersburg, in front of the Constitutional Court building on the Senate Square. The artist described it as a “diptych” called “Thirty pieces of silver” and “The Judas Tree”. On the pavement in front of the entrance to the building, Benkovich scattered 30 iron circles (“coins”), and on a nearby tree he attached a symbolic hanging loop welded from steel rebar.

"The name “Judas” is often used synonymously with betrayal and describes hypocrites and corrupt people. The phrase “thirty pieces of silver” refers to the price of betrayal. Today we are witnessing a deception on a biblical scale. Judas' unbearable agony of conscience should be a lesson to all the money-loving people who trade our future."

Russia Day
On June 12, 2021, Russia Day, another street artwork by Konstantin Benkovich appeared on the wall of the house at 134 Agronomichnaya Street in Nizhny Novgorod, where Boris Nemtsov (the first governor of Nizhny Novgorod) lived from 1991 to 1997. It's a clock moving backwards. This project was prepared for the street art festival “MESTO” (“The Place”). The artist commented on his action, repeating the thesis about “unfulfilled hopes”:

"The city of Nizhny Novgorod is known for such people as Andrei Sakharov, Boris Nemtsov, and Irina Slavina... The clock mechanism represents modern Russia moving backwards rather than forwards."

Collaboration with art galleries
Konstantin Benkovich debuted as a street artist in St. Petersburg with his Pac-Man installation three months before his first solo exhibition in Montenegro, at Marat Gelman's Dukley European Art Community. Benkovich wrote to Gelman on Facebook about his art and the famous gallerist got interested in his artworks, especially in “Two-headed eagle” (the Russian coat of arms made of rebar). Gelman invited Benkovich to his Montenegrin art residence. There Konstantin made a series of different eagles for his first exhibition “Uniform”, which took place in May-June 2016. The same year, Konstantin started collaborating with the Cova Art Gallery in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.

Later Benkovich participated with his work “Case File” in the group exhibition “Art Riot. Russian Post-Soviet Actionism” (2017—2018) at the Saatchi Art Gallery in London along with Pussy Riot and other well-known Russian artists.

Benkovich also collaborated with other curators: Andrey Bartenev (exhibition “Circus, Circus, Circus” at the ART4.RU Contemporary Art Museum located in Moscow, 2018) and Marianna Maksimovskaya (exhibition “MEMories” at the Moscow Exhibition Hall “New Manege”, 2018 ).

The same year, Konstantin Benkovich held his first solo exhibition in Russia: “Pop over” at the Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art (St. Petersburg). The name of the exhibition was invented by Benkovich and meant the end of the era of glamour and pop culture:

"Rebar instead of the pencil. Pop culture symbols behind the bars. Benkovich’s grids act as the perception traps, where the image loses its irritating colorful clothes. In this case, the cryptic metaphor becomes the essence. One can comprehend it not through the automatic emotional perception, but through something different, something that makes the lucky few admire the beauty of the algebraic equation. In his works, Benkovich follows the dictate of rational thought and protest rhetoric, which partly offsets the modernist pathos. The artist offers obvious associations such as grid – non-freedom, Cheburashka – Mickey Mouse, Russia – the USA… At the exhibition, the popular symbols seem burnt out and exposed. The exhibition title “Pop Over” suggests that the images have now lost their power. An image can no longer manipulate people’s consciousness, imposing a product, ideology, or emotion."

In 2019, Benkovich had two solo exhibitions at once. The centerpiece of the exhibition “Religion” (the MIZK Gallery, art space CUBE.Moscow) was an installation dedicated to the September 11 attacks. The main elements of the exhibition were created at different times and for several projects but were successfully put together into a single whole. For example, a Russian double-headed eagle was made for a Montenegrin exhibition, and a metal butterfly was a part of an unrealized project. The main focus of the exhibition was on the planes crashing into the World Trade Center towers. Benkovich drew a biblical parallel to this event, referring to the legend of the Tower of Babel. The artist made three new works to unite all the elements: metal books − the Bible, the Quran, and the Torah. When assembled, the composition resembled an altar.

Benkovich's next solo exhibition, “20:19,” was also held in Moscow, at the Triumph Gallery on Ilyinka Street. The exhibition featured sculptures and paintings made in 2019. The works of that period were marked by a combination of images (“star-double-headed eagle”) and by the introduction of bright colors in Benkovich's works, which create a “festive-remonstrative” mood.

"Brutal and laconic works of the sculptor are filled with irony that goes into criticism and then back. Using rebar as his core material, the sculptor creates extremely concrete images-symbols or -emblems. He juxtaposes them and invites the audience to take a fresh look at familiar things."

Work in Israel
In 2020, Konstantin Benkovich acquired Israeli citizenship. There was another installation in Tel Aviv: two khaki-colored flags of Israel and State of Palestine mounted on the facade of the city's Contemporary Art Center. They were not so much the flags themselves as a symbol of confrontation between these two states. These were chevrons of a military uniform. Konstantin explained that his mission, as an artist and pacifist, was to conduct a test of tolerance in Israeli society and separately among his colleagues.

In December 2020, Konstantin Benkovich started to work with Israeli art dealer and art manager Evgeny Kolosov. This collaboration resulted in Konstantin signing a contract with the Corridor Contemporary Gallery in Tel Aviv.

About Art
Konstantin Benkovich is considered to be an artist of the Millennial Generation or Generation Y. Representatives of this generation have successfully adapted to digitalization. Yet, they do not feel enthusiastic about it and do not take the modern digital world for granted, because they carry the memory and experience of the pre-digital era. This mixed attitude towards digitalization generates reflection and criticism of our new reality. Benkovich's artwork named “Facebook” is very illustrative: the bar-welded letter “F” has its “head” blown off with bursting flames. The artist states that social networks create an illusion of freedom while in reality, they establish control over people's minds. The artist's further work in this direction should lead him to a dialogue with the coming and predominant digital and computerized visuality.

As a true millennial, Benkovich prefers real material to animation because it gives such senses as tactility and volume. Many artists of the Millennial generation from Saint-Petersburg demonstrate a special attitude to the material and technique of their work. Drawing becomes more than a drawing and Benkovich, as well as Antonina Fatkhullina, brings it into three-dimensional space. Another artist, Ivan Tuzov, transforms pixel aesthetics into the form of traditional glass mosaics. Tatyana Akhmetgalieva, for example, uses various embroidery techniques, with bright wool threads − just like Benkovich's bars and grids − substituting strokes and lines. All these artists rethink the process of drawing and the language of graphics itself in their works.

The translation of a bright and well-known image into the language of the grid is Benkovich's key method. Curator Lizaveta Matveeva, referring to the reputable American art critic Rosalind E. Krauss, notes that the grid is a formative principle of postmodern art. Yet, in Russian culture, the grid is also strongly associated with imprisonment, aggression, anger, and powerlessness. The grid becomes the principal motif of Benkovich’s works. Art historian Alexander Borovsky describes this as an appeal to the “material innermost”. As a rule, the artist works with collective traumas and complicated images that evoke unpleasant memories. Such works include “Pac-Man”, “The Scream”, and others, as well as the installation “WTC” dedicated to the September 11 attacks.

"Benkovich's works on the tragedy of September 11 are reduced to a silhouetted grid structure. Comparable to a new urban eidos, we follow a semantic linkage between form and content, a tangible manifestation of essential meaning… A distant imprint in the subconscious is actualized and revealed when presented with a fitting occasion."

Benkovich employs the motifs of defense and offense with confidence — balaclavas, masks, riot police gear, CCTV cameras, Molotovs, etc. At the same time, as Matveeva notes, brutal and laconic works of the sculptor are filled with irony (such works as Donald Duck, the Yellow Duck, and the Tablets of Stone).

Borovsky thinks that Benkovich was somehow able to nurture his “sense of mediality”, something they do not teach at the Saint Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design or anywhere else for that matter. According to Borovsky, the concept of “mediality” includes a meaningful aesthetic attitude to technique and material, a dialectical attitude to recognizability and unexpectedness, a combination of the visual and the non-visual, consideration of additional (e.g., memorial) factors, understanding of mass media consumption (the so-called “newsmaking”). All of this, in Borovsky's opinion, is inherent to Benkovich as an artist.

"The artist also honed in on his own technique: the thick rebar and welding. He also found his module: the relation between height and width of the matrix quadrants to the thickness of rebar. Coloring came in its due time too. The structural solutions varied as well: turning away from the grid support, gaps/ redactions in composition, etc. the artist has learned to graft several layers of mediality onto the conceptual framework of an idea."

Borovsky also sees development in Benkovich's art. The artist makes curious forays beyond the repressive manifestations, beyond the eidos of bars. It is seen in such works as “The Gates”, where the regular connotations are overthrown by architectural form, “The Spray Paint”, “The Shower”, “The Lamp”. Benkovich's work “The Shower” (a cone of metal “jets” directed from a showerhead) is compared by Borovsky with Ilya Kabakov’s drawing of the same name. These works are, at first glance, emblematic images. However, according to the critic, the physical is indeed opposed to the meta-physical, and vice versa. All this gives Borovsky reason to hope that Benkovich will elevate onto a new level of mediality and content.

Recognition

 * In 2021, Konstantin Benkovich was included in a non-ranked list of outstanding contemporary Russian artists “Russian Investment Art Rating 49 ART”.
 * Konstantin Benkovich is included in the list of “The Best Russian Contemporary Artists” (ARTEEX).

Street installations

 * Perm, Belinskogo St., 2019 – Yellow Duck
 * Peterhof, the State Museum-Reserve “Peterhof” (Palace Square, Pravlenskaya Street), 2019
 * Budva, Montenegro (Dukley gardens), 2017
 * St. Petersburg, The State Russian Museum (The Marble Palace), 2016

Personal exhibitions

 * 2019 –
 * 20:19”, The Triumph Gallery, Moscow, Russia
 * “Religion”, MIZK Gallery, Moscow, Russia
 * 2018 – “Pop over”, the Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art, St. Petersburg, Russia
 * 2016 – “Uniform”, curated by Marat Gelman, Dukley European Art Community (DAEC), Kotor, Montenegro

Group exhibitions

 * 2019 – “Gold”, curated by Olga Krasutskaya, WINZAVOD center of contemporary art, Red Hall, Moscow, Russia, 2018
 * 2018-2019 – “The Fairytale Land of Street Art”, (Russian: “Сказочная страна Стритартия”) Street Art Museum (SAM), St. Petersburg, Russia
 * 2018 –
 * “MEMories”, curated by Marianna Maksimovskaya, Moscow Exhibition Hall “New Manege” in collaboration with the Triumph Gallery, Russia
 * “Circus, Circus, Circus”, curated by Andrey Bartenev, ART4 Gallery, Moscow, Russia
 * 2017-2018 – Marat Gelman's exhibition “Russian Post-Soviet Actionism”, Saatchi Gallery, London, United Kingdom
 * 2012 –
 * National Festival of Contemporary Art “Cultural Alliance”, Perm, Russia
 * “Social Networks”, the Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art, St. Petersburg, Russia
 * “ПереJEWание”, Nevsky 8 Art Center, St. Petersburg, Russia
 * “Default”, V. Mayakovsky Art Center, Nevsky 20, St. Petersburg, Russia
 * 2011 – “Stability”, the Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art, St. Petersburg, Russia

Curatorial projects

 * 2018-2020 – “The Last Supper”, Sense Gallery, art space Cube.Moscow, Moscow, Russia

Видео

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Category:21st-century Russian painters Category:Russian contemporary artists Category:Israeli contemporary artists