Fungai Benhura: Both Directions At Once
Both Directions At Once, the debut solo exhibition of Fungai Benhura, whose layered and tactile paintings resonate with the spirit of jazz improvisation. Borrowing its title from John Coltrane’s posthumously released 1963 album, Benhura’s work embodies the same duality of simultaneous forward momentum and retrospective reflection that defines Coltrane’s sound. As in jazz, where structure and improvisation intertwine to create something wholly unpredictable yet bound by rhythm, Benhura’s practice emerges through a continuous process of building and deconstructing, where each gesture responds to both the present and the past.
Benhura’s surfaces—torn, collaged, painted, and reworked—reveal the visual equivalent of musical phrases, improvising within the “rules” of his materials. He builds his compositions from a diverse array of found elements—often posters, coffee sacks, beer cans, and metal panels—creating a textured foundation that serves as the score for his paint. Each layer speaks to a history unearthed, as the artist reconfigures these materials, much like a jazz musician interpreting familiar notes in fresh and surprising ways. In this way, the construction of his paintings is an evolving dialogue between mastery and exploration, precision and spontaneity.
Influenced by the likes of artists from Lee Krasner and Mark Bradford to Klimt and Velasquez, Benhura blends an appreciation of historical art with the textures and techniques of today. These influences are woven into his practice, surfacing as moments of painterly tension or as echoes of classical composition. Within the abstraction, sharp-eyed viewers may catch glimpses of a silhouette—perhaps a musical note or the curve of a saxophone—hinting at the figurative elements that anchor his work in the traditions of the past whilst simultaneously propelling it into the future.
Often listening to the jazz masters such as Coltrane, Miles Davis and Wynton Marsalis while he paints, Benhura's canvases reflect an improvisational energy. Vivid bursts of colour emerge from dark, more meditative tones, not as disruptions but as revelations, where histories and moments converge. These ruptures, both physical and conceptual, create spaces of tension and release—areas where the artist’s hand meets the unexpected, where something hidden is revealed.
As with jazz, Benhura’s process is one of continual reinvention. The marks, scratches and textures across his canvases are like traces of a narrative, charting a journey that oscillates between creation and destruction, accumulation and erasure. His paintings thrive on these contrasts, embracing change and discovery, where layers shift and reconfigure with each new viewing. It is within these layered histories that Benhura’s work finds its rhythm, an abstract improvisation rendered in form and colour.
