Art follows the ways of life and changes according to the eras in which it is created; today’s world demands immediate usability, it devours images and information, and the speed with which a figurative representation can be assimilated becomes the discriminating factor for its acceptance or rejection.
However, if the concept expressed through a visual resolution is linked to a fast-paced and often chaotic world, the reflection on that concept must instead embrace the slowness that culture requires, so that it does not become a fleeting and superfluous idea.
When observing Andrea Benetti’s works, the viewer is forced to navigate two parallel lines: signifier and meaning appear disconnected, and it is up to the observer to reunite them—something one can only do if willing to take a moment for reflection and feel engaged in the message.
The complete freedom to explore the teachings of past styles allows today’s artists to choose the most effective expressive method. Andrea Benetti employs both new materials and compositions with original techniques that incorporate objects and color, yet he does not disdain tradition, and often oil paint once again becomes the protagonist of the canvas.
It is precisely by referring to a distant past that Benetti coins the term Neo-Cave painting for his work—a name that evokes the idea of reviving the representation of an ancestral and primitive world, in which humans were closer to nature and its biorhythm.
Once again, images regain the symbolic value they held in ancient graffiti; they do not mimic but rather allude to an idea, and perhaps even a way of life—or more precisely, a way of looking at life.
This return to a simplicity perceived as necessary does not imply an optimistic vision of a childhood-like state of humanity; on the contrary, in many of Benetti’s works, one can sense a melancholy awareness of the present.
Colors and shapes replace a narrative phase, becoming symbolic and summarizing moments: intricate lines and distressing hues or sinuous forms and pleasant chromatic tones mark alternating phases of contemporary existence, leading humans to experience contrasting states of emotional awareness.
Thus, perhaps Neo-Cave Art aims to counteract the overwhelming flood of images that bombard us without truly affecting us anymore—through symbols and essential graffiti, stripped to their core yet rich in meaning. It is based on the belief that a single line, at times, conveys more than an entire composition; that a single phrase can strike us more deeply than an entire book.
One simply needs to take the time, if willing, to stop and look at art again—to once more experience the shared feeling or the dissent, the pleasure or the revulsion that it evokes in us.