Scott Benzel

Benzel was born in Scottsdale, Arizona, and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada. He graduated from the University of Arizona after undergraduate work at California Institute of the Arts. In 1998, Benzel returned to California Institute of the Arts and received his MFA in 2001. Benzel is a member of the faculty of the School of Art at California Institute of the Arts.

Benzel's work explores the processes and contradictions inherent in mass media systems of production, the development of collective cultural imaginations and identification, and mythologized cultural histories.

Benzel's work has been shown or performed at The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis,[2] LAXART, Los Angeles, Maccarone, New York,[3] Various Small Fires, Los Angeles,[4] Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, Human Resources Los Angeles, the Bard Center for Curatorial Studies,[5] the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (in collaboration with Sam Durant and Tom Recchion), Performa 09, New York (in collaboration with Mike Kelley),[6] Mandrake, Los Angeles, Art Basel, Miami, and Art Basel: Statements (in collaboration with Andrea Bowers).

Benzel collaborated with Mike Kelley on the scores and soundtracks to Kelley’s installations Day is Done at Gagosian Gallery, New York, Profondeurs Vertes at the Musée du Louvre, Paris, and Kelley and Michael Smith’s A Voyage of Growth and Discovery at the Sculpture Center, New York and West of Rome, Los Angeles. With Kelley, he composed and produced Judson Church Dances, a live performance of the music of Day is Done with Kelley at Judson Church for Performa 09, New York.

Benzel's performances often incorporate live musicians performing his original compositions. Since 2017, he has been employing limited AI, Machine Learning, and generative algorithmic platforms as part of the composition process. Live performances of compositions include Torcat Tiqaucrat Mytics Ahtrae Blum and Poe, Los Angeles, 2018, Mathesis and Mathematikoi, for string quartet, anvil, dancers, and telescope operator, at the Mt. Wilson Observatory, Knowledges 2017,[11]The Kouroi/The Society of Dilettani, for string trio, experimental punk trio, voice, and live stream, at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2017, Op. 21: Inner Experience Fellowship/Friends of Crime, at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles, 2015, Desert Center (Composition I10 Mvmt IV (Dusk)), at the Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, CA, and Desert Center, CA, 2015, and Split Chorale for Viljo Revell for 300 voices, at Toronto City Hall, Nuit Blanche, Toronto, ON, 2014

Musical projects have included Destroy All Monsters, the band led by American artist Mike Kelley, and Machines of Loving Grace.

In 2009, Benzel released Blak Bloc, a composition for string quartet and guitar feedback and synthesizer, chosen by Artforum magazine as a Best of 2009: Music.[12]

In addition to production and remix work with The Red Krayola, Destroy All Monsters, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Lucinda Williams, Boss Hog, and various others, Benzel has produced albums for Fat Possum Records and Plug Research in Los Angeles.[13]

In 2019 Benzel organized Hoard Inaugural at Los Angeles Contemporary Archive, featuring works by Anonymous, Autonomous Oral History Group, Kelman Duran, Arshia Haq, Nick Kochornswasdi, Halldora Miyoko Magnusdottir, Olivia Mole, Misael Oquendo, Rapterotica/Cephalerotica Index, Hande Sever, Alan Tofighi, and Adam Wand. According to the press release, Hoard Inaugural’s works function on a vector divorced from the model of the standardized, refined index or ‘complete’ artwork. They are works and collections that tarry with the hoard and sometimes succumb. The works suggest the possibility of endless conjugation and the impossibility of final categorization, they contain evidence of digging, of obsession, and in some cases unresolvable moral quandaries. In 2015, Benzel organized Sonatine Bureaucratique at Los Angeles Contemporary Archive. According to the press release, The show features found and archived material from seemingly disparate spheres presented in conjunction to illuminate how the works of certain conceptual artists ultimately prefigured contemporary systems that have become thoroughly aligned with an administration of social control. Including original catalogs and artist’s books by Guy De Cointet, Charles Gaines, Douglas Huebler, and Seth Siegelaub.

In 2012 Benzel curated (in conjunction with SASSAS) Welcome Inn Time Machine, part of the Pacific Standard Time Performance Festival[14][15] and, in 2013, Tape Music: .sound at the Schindler House.[16] Both shows presented historical and contemporary experimental musical works in unusual settings.

In 2011 Benzel organized Sublimated Los Angeles: a film series highlighting little-seen films with strong ties to Los Angeles and suppressed for a variety of reasons, including: Play it as it Lays (1972), Let there be light (1946), Dial M for Murder in 3D (1954), Pumping Iron (1977) at Fellows of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. In 2011, Benzel curated Seven Los Angeles Artists featuring artists Kathryn Andrews, Anonymous, Anonymous, Erin Cosgrove, Mark Hagen, Mike Kelley, and Rodney McMillian, at Fellows of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles from Oct.15-Dec.17

Benzel is a member of the faculty of the School of Art at California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA.[17] He previously taught at the University of California Riverside, Riverside, CA, and California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

Benzel has lectured and taught seminars at Escuela Incierta, Cali, Colombia, 2018, Claremont College, Claremont, CA, 2014, and University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 2012

• Website
• Tumblr
• Frieze Bad and Good Times in L.A. 2018
• Artinfo/Modern Painters Feature 2015
• Flash Art Maccarone 2014 Review
• Art in America Maccarone 2014 Review
• ArtReview Review 2011
• Artforum Review 2011
• Scott Benzel at IMDb
• with Mike Kelley
• Numero Deux Recordings
• Technoscience and the Avant-Garde, Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, Vol.1 Number 1, 2002