Pablo Benzo’s Solo Exhibition ‘Time Traveler’ Opens at The Hole

The Hole will host the first New York solo exhibition of Berlin-based Chilean artist Pablo Benzo, titled ‘Time Traveler and Other Fragile Detours,’ from October 3 to October 11 at the gallery’s Tribeca location.

The exhibition features five new paintings and six works on paper, inspired by Peggy Guggenheim’s legendary 1940s gallery, ‘Art of This Century,’ which introduced Surrealism and Cubism to New York.

Benzo’s work channels this avant-garde lineage through a muted palette of greens, yellows, magentas, and blues. His brushy, stippled oils form volumetric shapes that blur the line between abstraction and figuration, transforming interiors into stage-like settings where figures, plants, and furniture intertwine. A recurring motif is the ‘pancake plant,’ with its rounded leaves adding rhythmic balance to the scenes.

Highlights of the exhibition include a canvas depicting a woman gazing from her living room beside a painting-within-a-painting of a Modigliani-style nude, as well as works where sofas and figures merge into playful, curving designs. Throughout this series, Benzo plays with perspective, layering ‘pictures within pictures’ in a way that echoes early Cubism while reframing it as what he describes as a ‘sensory inheritance.’