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Erik Benjamins

Perseus, 2025

  • Photogravure Print
  • 19.4 H × 15.0 W in.
$395
+ Shipping

Butts of Florence

Los Angeles-based conceptual artist and photographer Erik Benjamins has been making photographs of statuesque posteriors since his second visit to Florence nearly a decade ago. Since then, Benjamins’ artful documents of various historic buttocks have come to signify something much more than the undeniably shapely forms that comprise these expertly-made compositions. Via the artist’s literal and figurative lens, larger themes emerge, broad at first—history, travel, bodies, classicism, mythology—and then more focused, just as the compositions themselves disavow the figure in favor of a tighter crop. What happens when an artist looks at an artist?, when a work looks at a work?, when a print looks at a photograph looking at a sculpture looking at a fable? In Erik’s diptych of intaglio prints—Eros and Perseus (both 2025)—subjects photographed in the Galleria degli Uffizi and the Piazza della Signoria, respectively, are translated through the artist’s picture-making, and then again via close collaboration with the Nice-born, Los Angeles-based master printer Pascal Giraudon. The result is a contemporary dialogue rooted in renaissance histories, and a layered treatise on humor, lore, craft, antiquity, desire, and wanderlust. Also, though, what lovely butts.

Signed and Numbered edition of 50 + 10 AP

Perseus with the Head of Medusa

Benvenuto Cellini, Perseus with the Head of Medusa, Bronze, c. 1545–1554

Perseus with the Head of Medusa

[Detail of] Benvenuto Cellini, Perseus with the Head of Medusa, Bronze, c. 1545–1554

The lookout over central Florence as seen from San Miniato al Monte, a favorite spot of the artist’s for writing, thinking, and relaxing, 2014.

“Butts of Florence was first a travel memoir comfortably sized for your back pocket. Cheaply made and non-precious, the 100-page book featured travel writing punctuated by formal black and white photographs of the butts of various Florentine sculpture. Self-published in 2014, the book documented a return to Florence, eight years after studying abroad as a third-year undergrad. Across text and image, the piece sought to both welcome and complicate the inevitable romance and expectation that I had molded to that city with a carefree and humorous sense of observational writing and picture-taking.” ...

Erik Benjamins, Butts of Florence, 2014, Cover

Butts of Florence, pp. 14, 15

Butts of Florence, pp. 48, 49

Butts of Florence, pp. 60, 61

“As the book began to find success in shops and museum stores around the world, I started to explore how I could contrast the lo-fidelity printed imagery of the book with something a bit more grand and classic. The resulting pair of photo etchings, printed in a small edition at Josephine Press in Santa Monica in 2015, felt like an elegant complement. As I quietly celebrated the tenth birthday of the project—which has become a bit of a calling card—last year, I began to imagine what a return to the butts could look like.” ...

Erik Benjamins Etching No. 24, 2015

Erik Benjamins Etching No. 15, 2015

“These two new etchings printed by master Pascal Giraudon in his magical studio in Van Nuys, represent a first step in this journey. The artistic insight and technical sensitivities with which Pascal has realized this new pair of images is awe-inspiring and deeply motivating in my continued expansion of this project.” — EB

Perseus on the press.

Brayers in Giraudon’s studio.

Giraudon in his Van Nuys studio.

Perseus, photopolymer plate.

Giraudon in his Van Nuys studio.

Perseus.

About the Artist

Erik Benjamins (b. 1986) lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Adopting materials and gestures across visual arts, design, performance, and writing, Erik’s practice explores themes surrounding sense of place, embodied knowledge, and poetic possibilities of text as it lives both on and off the page. He has realized projects with the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Contemporary Calgary, Blunk Space, the Neutra VDL Studio & Residences, the MAK Center Schindler House, Spring Workshop Hong Kong, the Jan Van Eyck Academie, and Foreland Catskill. He has participated in artist residencies at the EKWC (European Ceramic Work Center), the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity, and the Institute for Art & Olfaction, the Santa Fe Art Institute, and Mildred’s Lane. Currently, he’s continuing a multiyear project involving sensory tile making and working on a new 10-year anniversary edition his experimental travel memoir, Butts of Florence.

The artist’s former studio in Mar Vista, California.

Erik Benjamins. Portrait by Kovi Konowiecki.

Erik Benjamins Perseus, 2025 Photogravure Print 19.4 H × 15.0 W in. (49.2 H × 38.1 W cm)

Edition of 50 + 10 AP

Printing: Intaglio Photogravure / Heliogravure Printer: Pascal Giraudon, Van Nuys, CA, US Paper: Rives BFK, 250gsm

Original Medium: Photograph