ERIK BENSON

I make paintings that are informed by fragments of urban landscape and culture that are found in the everyday. I am particularly attracted to imagery that is ubiquitous within an urban architectonic setting, in which elements of plasticity and temporality are depicted in a suspended state of in-between ness. It is my intention that these elements incorporate a resonance of a special psycho-geography of place and placeless ness that conveys the infrastructure (physically, psychologically, and conceptually) of the urban landscape and it’s issues. An urban sampling of fragment and space, that attempts to express something new about the spaces we inhabit.

I am interested in making painting in an analog sense. I believe that painting is a visual language of thinking and seeing . My process is connected to this theory by the ways in which the paintings are made and imagery is depicted. I build my paintings by pouring acrylic paint onto sheets of glass. Once the shapes have solidified and acquired elasticity, they are peeled off and collaged into larger compositions. These collaged constructions create a certain mimetic relationship between the images depicted and the processes in which they are made. This for me, relates back to how the subjects are seen and interpreted in the actual world. 

- erik benson