Scott Benzel

Scott Benzel
Scott Benzel- Inversion I for Dennis Wilson, 2009
Born	1968 (1968) Scottsdale, Arizona
Nationality	American
Education	University of Arizona, BA 1995, California Institute of the Arts, M.F.A, 2001
Known for	contemporary art, sculpture, photography, and video art.

Scott Benzel (born 1968 in Scottsdale, Arizona, lives and works in Los Angeles), is an American visual artist, composer, and producer.

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.

Interested in the contradictions inherent in mythologized cultural histories, Benzel's work shows an ongoing fascination with the disjuncture between embodiments of popular culture - from the classical music score to photographic ephemera - and their accumulated meanings. Undertaking research into the genealogy of seminal pop music and cultural moments, Benzel’s interventions such as turning a pop musical score upside down to be played by a classically trained quartet and pressing the resulting recording to a lacquer which degrades upon play (Inversion I after Dennis Wilson) explore the processes and contradictions of mass media systems of production alongside the development of collective cultural imaginations and identification.

Benzel's visual and sound-based artwork has been shown at The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, The Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis, The Bard Center for Curatorial Studies, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (in collaboration with Sam Durant and Tom Recchion), Performa 09, New York (in collaboration with Mike Kelley) LAXART, Los Angeles, Maccarone, New York, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles,Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, Human Resources, Los Angeles, The Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA, The Western Front, Vancouver, BC, Mandrake, Los Angeles, and Art Basel: Statements (in collaboration with Andrea Bowers). He has collaborated with Mike Kelley on the soundtracks to Kelley’s installations Day is Done at Gagosian, New York, Profondeurs Vertes at the 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.