“Overbody: New Works by Sreshta Rit Premnath” Review

“Overbody: New Works by Sreshta Rit Premnath” is an exhibition of painting, weaving, and sculpture in Usdan Gallery that was curated by Anne Thompson. The exhibition is a conversation between Premnath and dance faculty members Kota Yamazaki and Mina Nishimura, who created movement scores in response to Premnath’s drawings for sculptures in the exhibition. 

Bennington faculty John Umphlett provided technical guidance, Phoenix Malanga provided installation support, and Samantha Pasapane fabricated the metal structure of the piece Vanishing Point. The opening reception was on Tuesday, September 16th, and the exhibition runs until December 6th. 

The “overbody,” as described by Premnath in conversation with Anne Thompson, is a concept he considers to be twofold. One aspect is the underbody: the shadow, the body-on-the-edge, spectral and ghostly. The overbody are the forces that shape the shadow: the political and the societal. The human exists in a flux state between the two. 

The works are influenced by “butoh,” a Japanese dance-theater form popularized in the mid-to-late 50’s characterized by slow, awkward dance moves that accentuate the corpse-like nature of the body. It is, like the human, in flux, both beautiful and terrifying. It is grotesque, its focal point centered on the inherent strangeness of the human form, a meditation on the “body without organs.”

The exhibit is inherently meditative and intentionally unexplained. The lack of signage and plaques aids this ruminatory sense. The closest thing to an explanation are signs on the walls: an exploration, like the sculptural works, of ambiguity, of the tension between the ordinary and the profane.

The sculptural works are an organic meditation on corporeality, space and the absence of space, bodies and the absence of bodies. How do bodies relate to each other, themselves, and the world at large? What is the relationship to the under/overbody and humanity? What delineates beauty from ugliness? While aesthetically pleasing, there is an aspect of both absurdity and ugliness present in the works, which feels authentically human in its dichotomies.