Argentinian Art
Carrie Bencardino at MALBA: A Surreal Descent into Dreams and Demons
August 07, 2025 | nadiaevangelina
In “El desentierro del diablo“ (The Unburying of the Devil), Carrie Bencardino stages her institutional debut at MALBA—a subterranean stage for the uncanny—that transforms gallery one into a tableau both theatrical and intimate. Curated by Carlos Gutiérrez, the exhibition champions a “crisis of imagination” borne of contemporary political instability and eroding emotional bonds. Here, Bencardino is not simply painting; she is excavating the subconscious, conjuring dreamscapes that unsettle as they seduce.
The visual language is defiantly surreal. Eleven freshly minted canvases dominate the space—one is colossal, depicting a funeral car in ominous grandeur. Characters appear suspended between roles (heroes, spectres, objects) never fully legible. In “Conversación”, figures face each other without meeting the viewer’s gaze, rupturing narrative continuity and generating an antiseptic, strangely cold interaction. The disjunctions, like hat beside dragon, sofa next to seminudista, emphasize a deliberate unease. Bencardino uses distortion as aesthetic choice, as she “recoils from literal flatness,” probing “the spectral life of objects” and questioning binaries like good and evil.
This anticlassical approach extends to the installation itself, recalling an immersive club or cinema, with purple carpets and walls that envelop visitors in a nocturnal mood. The staging, simultaneously convivial and uncanny, mirrors the paintings’ oscillation between familiarity and the fantastical.
Interwoven in the exhibition is a video monologue, “Los sueños están rotos”, through which Bencardino probes influences ranging from surrealism to magical thinking, articulating an urgent desire to forge images that shatter complacent, totalizing narratives. She challenges the passivity induced by AI-generated imagery (“infinite images, infinite answers… what if it only anesthetizes us?”), reclaiming imagination as a terrain of rebellion and shared dreaming.
Technically, her brushwork favors gestural fluidity over precision, reflecting her non-binary identity and rejecting rigid forms. The material presence of paint, its viscous gestures, layered textures; works in concert with her themes: uncertainty, liminality, multiplicity.
Bencardino’s art positions itself at the threshold of perception. It asks not what we see, but what we feel when we see, and how this sensation reconfigures how we live—and collectively dream. In an era haunted by literal and metaphorical diseases—polarization, alienation—the exhibition stakes a claim for the imagination as a radical frontier.
At “El desentierro del diablo”, the devil is less a figure than an impulse, the drive to unearth, disturb, and re‑enchant. That impulse, beautifully disruptive, arrives at MALBA with a roar. This is a debut that doesn’t merely occupy institutional space; it excavates it, channeling the subterranean energies of the psyche onto the gallery’s floors and walls.
 |
| Carrie Bencardino at MALBA |
This anticlassical approach extends to the installation itself, recalling an immersive club or cinema, with purple carpets and walls that envelop visitors in a nocturnal mood. The staging, simultaneously convivial and uncanny, mirrors the paintings’ oscillation between familiarity and the fantastical.
 |
| Carrie Bencardino at MALBA |
Technically, her brushwork favors gestural fluidity over precision, reflecting her non-binary identity and rejecting rigid forms. The material presence of paint, its viscous gestures, layered textures; works in concert with her themes: uncertainty, liminality, multiplicity.
Bencardino’s art positions itself at the threshold of perception. It asks not what we see, but what we feel when we see, and how this sensation reconfigures how we live—and collectively dream. In an era haunted by literal and metaphorical diseases—polarization, alienation—the exhibition stakes a claim for the imagination as a radical frontier.
 |
| Carrie Bencardino at MALBA |
 |
| Carrie Bencardino at MALBA |
"El desentierro del diablo"
Location: Malba, Junín 1930, Av. Pres. Figueroa Alcorta 3415, C1425CLA CABA, Buenos Aires (Argentina)
Opening Date: 12th July 2025
End Date: 13th October 2025
Working hours: Wednesday- Monday: 12pm to 8pm
Official website:
Mentioned Artist:
