Long Codex

New York painter and draftsman Steve DiBenedetto creates visually complex, hallucinatory landscapes that recall the fantastic imagery of Hieronymus Bosch, William Blake, and Max Ernst, along with the linear rhythms of illuminated manuscripts---a reference that explains the title of the present drawing. Oscillating between a sense of order and chaos, surface and depth, and abstraction and figuration, DiBenedetto's dense composition brings together some of the artist's favorite images: the octopus, a symbol of regeneration; the Ferris wheel, an agent of disorientation; and the helicopter, signifying both physical and psychological transport.