Courtesy Todd Bienvenu Studio
No matter what Todd Bienvenu chooses to depict in a painting – a male nude lying on a bear skin rug in a Venus pose, a fearless female city bike rider, or a crowded water-park vista- his surfaces consistently pull you in by their bold vitality and idiosyncratic humor. Todd Bienvenu shares with Art Spiel some insights on his process, ideas and studio work.
AS: You were born in Little Rock Arkansas, got your BFA in Louisiana State University and continued your art studies at the NY Studio school. Tell me a bit about your background and what brought you to art.
Todd Bienvenu: I was always artistic, used to win all the school art prizes as a kid. Me and my brother built tree houses and skateboard ramps in the backyard, my mom let us use her living room for band practice. I had a drafting table where I’d make comic books. We made video skits with quick cutaways to rag dolls in our clothes falling out off trees. In college I majored in architecture as a freshman, it seemed like a creative job. Eventually I found my way to the art department and met some good teachers, I’ve never looked back.
AS: It seems to me that you are mostly known for your city life scenes inhabited by both female and male protagonists that are typically either observing or being observed, typically with some dark humor. I can’t avoid thinking that many of them are accumulated moments from your own life. I would like to know more about the narrative in your work.
Todd Bienvenu: A lot of the figures could be stand-ins for me or my friends and family. The males seem to wear jeans and white t-shirts a lot, and that’s kind of my uniform. At the NY Studio school there is an emphasis on painting from observation, a lot of that stuck. While I’m in the studio I paint from my head but different things I do or see in my daily life will show up in the paintings. I’ll think about the way something makes me feel and try to get the painting to talk about that. Or something funny or absurd will happen in my life and that will lead to a painting idea. There’s a phenomenon where if you start to think about something, you’ll begin to notice it everywhere, like if you ever get a new pair of shoes and you start seeing how many other people have them, the painting ideas kind of work like that for me.
I got my girlfriend a bike and that led to bike paintings of her cruising around our Brooklyn neighborhood. We went to Amsterdam and her dad almost got clipped by a bike because he’s English and was looking the wrong way. I made a painting about it. That led to a series of people falling in the shower, people on bikes getting hit by cars and buses. I started to spitball and made skateboard crash paintings, which reminded me of the times I wrecked my car in high school and so I made a few car crash paintings. Thinking of high school and how long ago that was reminds me of getting older and being at the age my dad was when I was a teenager. The last show was called “Dad Bod”, the paintings were a response to those feelings.
The idea of a macho male painter is kinda dated, I like to think my work has a vulnerability. The female is often the powerful one, the male treated self-deprecatingly. Sometimes my initial idea is better if the sex of the subject was switched to make it more unexpected or funny. Dad Bod had a male nude lying on a bearskin rug, a modern Venus, the absurdity of the sexy male body. The world probably has enough female nudes painted from the straight male gaze.
AS: It seems that you alternate between straightforward snapshot-like closeups and super-complex panoramic views. Can you guide us through each approach?
Todd Bienvenu: I like to think of myself as an abstract painter, I just need something to hang the paint on, I need imagery to tell me what to paint. A straightforward composition pushes against abstract decisions, but with a crop you can let the paint be paint without having to worry about getting things “right.” Same for a busy “Where’s Waldo?” composition. It’s just pieces of paint up close, lets me think about color to color. I want them to feel like sturdy abstract constructions, the image is a bonus, and a weird or funny or unexpected image is preferable to something I’ve seen before.
My dad is a big outdoorsman, he loves fishing, we always were out on the boat on the weekends. I made a painting of us the boat on the water, that led to a few versions of water skiing, fishermen, etc. I wanted to do a big one and my buddy Joe Andoe suggested a bikini car wash. Working on the car wash paintings reminded me of going to water parks as a kid, it felt like a good way to make an abstract painting, all the slides going around. All the little vignettes. I really like making paintings within paintings, tattoos, t-shirts, screens, stories in stories. This was a fun one to paint.
AS: You have always struck me as a painter with a virtuosic ability to make paint alive. Where are you aiming to take that skill, or in other words, what are you searching for in your work?
Todd Bienvenu: I think of it like playing an instrument, I want the song to be good, I’m not as bothered by showing off all the scales and music theory that i know. You don’t want to overplay. Having said that, it’s better to break the rules after you’ve mastered them. I don’t want to be limited but my goal is not to show off painting chops.
I’m not satisfied, I want the work to get better and better, otherwise why keep making it? But I’m not sure where it will go, I hope to keep surprising myself.
AS: It seems like you have been consistently interested in the figure. Where do you see your work in context of contemporary figurative painting?
Todd Bienvenu: Lots of great figure painting is happening now, Kathy Bradford, Henry Taylor, Doron Langberg, I would like to think I’m in the conversation, I’m happy if I get to the studio every day, the rest is just details.
Every artist is a product of their time, painting is probably the oldest art form. I’m respectful of its past but am also trying to push things along. Just because I love Cezanne doesn’t mean I want to make his paintings. I don’t really think about trends, though, the work just leads me along
I feel very fortunate in that I get to go make paintings every day.
AS: This is an art market question. You seem to be exhibiting extensively in Europe. Any reflection on that?
Todd Bienvenu: At the moment I don’t have a NYC gallery. Sebastien Bertrand in Geneva represents me, we had a show in February and last summer I had a show in Paris at Laurent Godin. I also work with Almine Rech, we did a show in her London space last year. In May 2020 I have a solo at Almine’s space in Shanghai. I collaborated with Sebastien and JRP editions to do a lithograph print in Paris last month. If a great program invites me to do a fun project, I’m interested, the Eurocentric nature of the past year probably speaks to how hard Sebastien works for me more than anything.
AS: What are you working on these days and how do you see your work developing?
Todd Bienvenu: Next up is the Shanghai show, I think it’s called Air Guitar, I’ve got a lot of things in the mix, not much finished but many possibilities. mostly oil paintings, I have to get them approved by the Chinese censor which I’m not sure if that will be a problem or not. I don’t really paint for a show, I just go to the studio every day and produce, then we’ll pick the best work that makes sense together. I’m trying to get more color in there, keep things abstract, try to come up with new themes. Whatever it is that I think I am doing at the start, it always changes, so I just try to stay open and listen to what the paint tells me.
Etty Yaniv works on her art, art writing and curatorial projects in Brooklyn. She holds BA in Psychology and English Literature from Tel Aviv University, BFA from Parsons School of Design, and MFA from SUNY Purchase. She founded Art Spiel as a platform for highlighting the work of contemporary artists, including art reviews, studio visits, interviews with artists, curators, and gallerists.
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