Installation view Jane Benson, Paula Cooper Gallery Palm Beach
System of Nature (Reflection II), 2020, archival inkjet print on canvas mounted on paper. plywood, 43" x 94" x 7"
Installation view Jane Benson, Paula Cooper Gallery Palm Beach
Installation view Jane Benson, Paula Cooper Gallery Palm Beach
Installation view Jane Benson, Paula Cooper Gallery Palm Beach
Installation view Jane Benson, Paula Cooper Gallery Palm Beach
In Defense of The Wild Women (Mona Caird), 2018
Hand-cut ink on paper and archival inkjet print on sintra. 53 9/16” x 92
Detail from The Pioneers of Civilisation (Mona Caird), 2018
Hand-cut ink on paper and archival inkjet print on sintra. 53 9/16” x 69”
Detail from In Defense of The Wild Women (Mona Caird), 2018
Hand-cut ink on paper and archival inkjet print on sintra. 53 9/16 x 92 inches
The End of The Patriarchal System (Mona Caird), 2018
Archival ink on hand-cut paper, 32 x 23 inches
Detail from The End of The Patriarchal System (Mona Caird), 2018
Archival ink on hand-cut paper, 32 x 23 inches
System of Nature (Reflection VII), 2020; archival inkjet print on paper and matboard, 13.5 x 26 x 3 inches
System of Nature (Reflection VI), 2020; archival inkjet print on canvas mounted on paper and matboard, 17.25 x 30.25 x 5 inches
System of Nature (Reflection V), 2020; archival inkjet print on paper and matboard, 14.75 x 29 x 3 inches
Detail from System of Nature (Reflection V), 2020; archival inkjet print on paper and matboard, 14.75 x 29 x 3 inches
Faux Faux (Fluorescent Green), hand-cut artificial eucalyptus leaves and plexiglass, 38 x 25 x 25 in.
Jane Benson, Paula Cooper Gallery Palm Beach
https://www.paulacoopergallery.com/exhibitions/jane-benson#tab:slideshow;tab-1:thumbnails
Paula Cooper Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of recent work by multidisciplinary artist Jane Benson. Working across sculpture, sound, drawing, and printmaking, Benson is known for interventions into existing works of art, literature, and found objects.
The works on display are investigations into the contemporary resonances of texts by British suffragette Mona Caird and Enlightenment philosopher Holbach (who wrote under the pseudonym Mirabaud). In both cases, Benson dismantles and reconstructs the literary works by excising syllables of the musical scale––do, re, mi, fa, soh, la, ti––to reveal a found score embedded within. In a further step, Benson translates the excavated scores into geometric color field prints based on Isaac Newton’s similarly arbitrary Color Spectrum. Layers of dots in various hues create a delicate moiré effect that visually embodies the revolutionary texts.
The Pioneer of Civilisation, A Defence of the Wild Women and The End of the Patriarchal System are the titles of essays in Mona Caird’s collection of writings on women’s suffrage published in 1892. Benson’s works of the same name excavate Caird’s texts, presenting either hand-written reproductions of the pages with sections cut out, or the excised text in combination with its audio-visual color field interpretation. Hung side by side, the scores and the abstractions invite the viewer to join in the act of translation, while slowing down the act of perception to create space and time for reflection. The nonsensical system is, to Benson, an accurate reflection of the enduring prevalence of the patriarchal system.
In her System of Nature (Reflection) series, Benson has applied the same technique to Holbach’s philosophical work. Benson read System of Nature (1770) during the pandemic lockdown and was struck by the relevance of Holbach’s writing on humankind’s alienation from nature. Selecting relevant passages, the artist applied her systematic intervention to produce a musical score from the text, which she used both as a literal score to make sound, and to create color field prints. In contrast to the earlier series, these new prints are displayed independently from their textual referent as succinct abstractions that gently curve away from the wall to form sculptural reliefs.