For Apertura Madrid Gallery Weekend 2022, Benveniste Contemporary presents a new project with Miki Leal (Seville, 1974) entitled A kilo of green, a series of original graphic work printed and published by Benveniste Contemporary in collaboration with the artist and the gallery F 2.

Miki Leal’s relationship with etchings has always been configured as a fertile territory of search and inquiry as well as an opportunity to delve into some of its thematic references, but, above all, as an area where creative dynamics are enriched and complexified by facing the process that mediates between the configuration of the work and its execution. It is precisely in this procedural dynamic where the essence of his relationship with the graphic work resides and on this occasion it can also be said that the process as such is the element that becomes the true engine of the proposal. Over the years and through series such as Record-Play, Santa Mónica Boulevard, In Cold Blood, The End and other works, Miki Leal has become familiar with the different techniques and procedures such as etching and aquatint, monotype, photogravure, drypoint or direct bite. On this occasion, for A kilo of green he has opted for the linocut, but in occasional combination with other techniques already used by him such as monotype, etching in a clear desire to go deeper, not only in the possibilities of medium, but also in the dynamic that opens up in every creative process between conception and realization. A path that allows him to reveal and give visibility to the game of intentions that presides over this proposal and by extension any creation process. A territory on the other hand, of reflection on intentionality in the field of painting, towards which he has directed a large part of his efforts and his production in recent years through the revision of models and reference. In this sense, the choice of linocut for this work is not surprising, to the extent that it is a technique with very defined expressive resonances, apparently simple technical constraints to put to the test and with a genealogy of linocut authors such as Picasso, Matisse or Baselitz, all of them components that offer a creative space on which Miki Leal can display his aforementioned games of intentions consisting of continuous reformulations, repositioning and resignifications about painting.

A kilo of green is developed with a series of characteristics that give it a natural look. The proposal is articulated, so to speak, from six starting models, six linocuts, from which he later develops six variations of each, applying various modifications in color, gradation or arrangement of elements. The result is thus six blocks of linocut, formed by six singular and unique pieces. Although the exercise of variations on a theme is something frequent in his work, here it becomes the true argument of the proposal. The six basic models are based on the review of well-defined genres and aesthetics in painting, whether portrait, still life, landscape, abstraction and geometry or history painting, which at the same time gives rise to the incorporation of quotes and themes (Cézanne, Piero della Francesca, jazz, decorative arts...), which refer to and give continuity to the recent block of work that has been developed in recent years under the global name of Known People. An affiliation that is already stated from the very title of the project, A kilo of green is a well-known expression attributed by Gauguin to Cézanne about the nature, quality and intensity of color, an aspect on which this work also largely revolves.