(A selection of works made in Drawing and/or Work on Paper is shown to offer a global vision of the different produced series)
To Tear the Arcane Veil, 1999 (Drawings: Mixed Media on Paper)
![Ernesto Benítez Mysterious Pearl Perla Misteriosa Philosophy and Art Contemporary: To Tear the Veil of Arcane, Analogical Thought (Clay, Fire, Ashes Coal artwork). Filosofía y Arte Contemporáneo: Rasgar el Velo de Arcano y Pensamiento Analógico (arcilla, mística de Fuego, Cenizas y Carbón dibujo papel) Ritualidad Kōan Arte](https://www.ernestobenitez.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/0-Perla-Misteriosa-1.jpg)
Mysterious Pearl
![Ernesto Benítez Birth of Man Nacimiento del Hombre Philosophy and Art Contemporary: To Tear the Veil of Arcane, Analogical Thought (Clay, Fire, Ashes Coal artwork). Filosofía y Arte Contemporáneo: Rasgar el Velo de Arcano y Pensamiento Analógico (arcilla, mística de Fuego, Cenizas y Carbón dibujo papel) Ritualidad Kōan Arte](https://www.ernestobenitez.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/0-Nacimiento-del-Hombre-1.jpg)
Birth of Man
![Ernesto Benítez Truth is not a Creed La Verdad no es Credo Philosophy and Art Contemporary: To Tear the Veil of Arcane, Analogical Thought (Clay, Fire, Ashes Coal artwork). Filosofía y Arte Contemporáneo: Rasgar el Velo de Arcano y Pensamiento Analógico (arcilla, mística de Fuego, Cenizas y Carbón dibujo papel) Ritualidad Kōan Arte](https://www.ernestobenitez.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/0-La-verdad-no-es-un-credo-1.jpg)
Truth is not a Creed
![Ernesto Benítez The Energy that Accompanies Me La energía que me acompaña Philosophy and Art Contemporary: To Tear the Veil of Arcane, Analogical Thought (Clay, Fire, Ashes Coal artwork). Filosofía y Arte Contemporáneo: Rasgar el Velo de Arcano y Pensamiento Analógico (arcilla, mística de Fuego, Cenizas y Carbón dibujo papel) Ritualidad Kōan Arte](https://www.ernestobenitez.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/0-La-energia-que-me-acompaña-1.jpg)
The Energy that Accompanies Me
![Ernesto Benítez Homo Arcanum Philosophy and Art Contemporary: To Tear the Veil of Arcane, Analogical Thought (Clay, Fire, Ashes Coal artwork). Filosofía y Arte Contemporáneo: Rasgar el Velo de Arcano y Pensamiento Analógico (arcilla, mística de Fuego, Cenizas y Carbón dibujo papel) Ritualidad Kōan Arte](https://www.ernestobenitez.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/0-Homo-Arcanum-1.jpg)
Homo Arcanum
![Ernesto Benítez Cloister of Passion Claustro de Pasión Philosophy and Art Contemporary: To Tear the Veil of Arcane, Analogical Thought (Clay, Fire, Ashes Coal artwork). Filosofía y Arte Contemporáneo: Rasgar el Velo de Arcano y Pensamiento Analógico (arcilla, mística de Fuego, Cenizas y Carbón dibujo papel) Ritualidad Kōan Arte](https://www.ernestobenitez.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/0-Claustro-de-pasion-1.jpg)
Cloister of Passion
![Mutatis Mutandis: Ascender a las Profundidades (Ascend to the Depths): visual Contemporary Art, Hermetic Philosophy, Alchemy, Arte Contemporáneo y Filosofía Hermética (drawing ashes Dibujo fuego cenizas). Artes Visuales Plásticas Cuban art](https://www.ernestobenitez.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/0-Ascender-a-las-profundidades-COVER.jpg)
Ascending to the Depths
![Ernesto Benítez Divided Sky Cielo dividido Philosophy and Art Contemporary: To Tear the Veil of Arcane, Analogical Thought (Clay, Fire, Ashes Coal artwork). Filosofía y Arte Contemporáneo: Rasgar el Velo de Arcano y Pensamiento Analógico (arcilla, mística de Fuego, Cenizas y Carbón dibujo papel) Ritualidad Kōan Arte](https://www.ernestobenitez.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/0-Cielo-dividido-1.jpg)
Divided Sky
![Puerta del Espíritu (Mutatis Mutandis) Door of the Spirit: visual Contemporary Art, Hermetic Philosophy, Alchemy, Arte Contemporáneo y Filosofía Hermética (drawing ashes Dibujo fuego cenizas). Artes Visuales Plásticas Cuban art](https://www.ernestobenitez.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Puerta-del-Espíritu-COVER.jpg)
Door of the Spirit
![Ernesto Benítez Ark of The Life Arca de la Vida Philosophy and Art Contemporary: To Tear the Veil of Arcane, Analogical Thought (Clay, Fire, Ashes Coal artwork). Filosofía y Arte Contemporáneo: Rasgar el Velo de Arcano y Pensamiento Analógico (arcilla, mística de Fuego, Cenizas y Carbón dibujo papel) Ritualidad Kōan Arte](https://www.ernestobenitez.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/0-Arca-de-la-Vida-dibujo-1.jpg)
Ark of The Life
![Ernesto Benítez Ambivalent Evidence of The Journey, Ambivalente evidencia del Viaje Philosophy and Art Contemporary: To Tear the Veil of Arcane, Analogical Thought (Clay, Fire, Ashes Coal artwork). Filosofía y Arte Contemporáneo: Rasgar el Velo de Arcano y Pensamiento Analógico (arcilla, mística de Fuego, Cenizas y Carbón dibujo papel) Ritualidad Kōan Arte](https://www.ernestobenitez.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/0-Ambivalente-evidencia-del-v-1.jpg)
Ambivalent Evidence of The Journey
![Abrir con amor el pecho (Mutatis Mutandis) Opening the chest with love: visual Contemporary Art, Hermetic Philosophy, Alchemy, Arte Contemporáneo y Filosofía Hermética (drawing ashes Dibujo fuego cenizas). Artes Visuales Plásticas Cuban art](https://www.ernestobenitez.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/0-Abrir-con-amor-el-pecho-COVER.jpg)
Opening the chest with love
![Ernesto Benítez Suspended heart Corazón Suspendido Philosophy and Art Contemporary: To Tear the Veil of Arcane, Analogical Thought (Clay, Fire, Ashes Coal artwork). Filosofía y Arte Contemporáneo: Rasgar el Velo de Arcano y Pensamiento Analógico (arcilla, mística de Fuego, Cenizas y Carbón dibujo papel) Ritualidad Kōan Arte](https://www.ernestobenitez.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/0-Corazon-suspendido-1.jpg)
Suspended heart
Drawings and Works on Paper (Academy Period). Art Student
The Drawing in Ernesto Benitez's Work (Contemporary Art)
It is curious that drawing in Ernesto Benitez’s work is not relegated to a secondary role, as is often the case with other contemporary artists. On the contrary: far from the connotations that drawing acquired during the Renaissance and very distant from assuming the values that modernism would later grant it, the artist exploits drawing by assuming the most traditional expressive techniques of this genre that -speaking in terms of aesthetics and postmodernity- some artists today avoid for fear of being associated with the representative side of the most orthodox art. For Benítez, his drawings, without losing their autonomy, are the perfect complements (not mere sketches) to proposals that, in many cases, end up being large-scale installation works. Perhaps that is why the artist himself affirms, referring to drawing, “I am cured of these doubts regarding the traditional genres of art… I am not interested at all in the striking stylistic effect that some neo-vanguardists (Donald Kuspit’s post-artists) are pursuing”.
Mixed Media Work on Paper and Drawing
According to the research that he develops for his different works and series, Ernesto Benítez moves between what he calls “an abstraction of figurative contour (utopian) and a pending, nebulous figuration, without context or footholds (dystopian)”. In both cases, the artist expandes drawing and does not disguise his aesthetics of academic basis (techné), something he could actually boast of, having studied at one of the academies of Fine Arts (San Alejandro) that places more emphasis on drawing and direct study of natural in Latin America.
His drawings (and his work as a whole) evoke, contrast and/or juxtapose an aesthetic of decadence and an aesthetic of emptiness, of the minimal, which avoids any distraction exercised by the superfluous. Hence the absence of a defined context in his two-dimensional works. Many drawings by Ernesto Benítez lack a spatial reference and the fact is that ambivalence -multivalence- (not ambiguity) is an imperative in his poetics. The figures (symbols) in Ernesto Benítez’s work are, at times, like slopes, halfway between heaven and earth; they are not fixed (they are suspended, pending) and are not stable or lasting. Many of his drawings enunciate a dialogue with images that find no anchorage, support or memory. Ernesto refers to them as elements that remain in a “penumbra of light” or in a “luminous darkness” and it doesn’t matter if the works are made with ashes from different origins, with ink, clay, conté pencil or other materials. Many of the contextual references and ideological ballasts fall apart; crumble into the spatial-temporal crossroads evoked by Ernesto Benítez’s drawing… “because exclusions do not save us, they drown us -like our glorious culture- in the sickly polarization that defines us, exclusively, for what we are not…”