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IN WAVES
BENJAMIN DEGEN | SUSAN INGLETT GALLERY -
Employing extensive mark-making and fluid touches, Benjamin Degen describes a human presence. As the paint darts across the canvas or the ink is actively applied to paper, we move through the landscape while the landscape moves through us. Degen's act of looking becomes a way for us to see ourselves, within a moment, connected to this world.
Here, we have an intimate glimpse into the artist's process. From initial ideas made in studio sketchbooks to the final large-scale works on paper and canvas, Degen's mastery is apparent throughout. -
"I arrive at the images through an iterative process. The composition usually starts as a rough sketch in the sketchbook which I revisit repeatedly in drawings and then paintings. The recent paintings were made concurrently with the drawings— I drew different versions of the images while I was making the paintings. The process of the image evolving is a process of painting and drawing co-informing each other over time."
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Way and Navagatrix
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A nude female leads her companion towards the shoreline. Her body is rendered in light, sparkling against the dense brushstroke of land and sea. Formally, Degen’s active brushwork conveys a natural energy: the ripples of ocean water and light radiating from the stars. This road-like reflection of the moon across the water is called a mångata and appears in several of the artist’s paintings. Here, it serves to draw the couple and the viewer alike down a mystical path of the painter’s imagining.
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The Artist's Studio
"As the picture takes on form, and pattern, and structure, it can start to show me a reflection, the patterns of movement, and the larger landscape around me. The sun rises and sets. The moon waxes and wanes. The horizon becomes a continuous line which describes the furthest point and the nearest point simultaneously."
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Set
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Set is a testament to Degen's love of paint and its possibility. Two men simultaneously look out to sea, lifting their arms in symmetry to shield their eyes from the bright light of the setting sun. Both are highly stylized— Degen's figures are never portraits but caricatures, Everyman. Here, the skin is rendered in a welter of mark-making and patterns. The figure on the left is covered in small yellow swirls, mimicking light as reflected off the waves. This pattern is extended at right, where delicate wisps of blue over a pink ground cast the figure in a purple haze, adding dimension to the existing palette. The bright gridded underpainting provides further clues to the painting's underpinning, suggesting the grid used to transfer sketch to canvas.
Palette, texture, and content all converge to create a unique dynamism in Degen's work— whereas the subject of movement plays an important role throughout the paintings in this exhibition, movement also comes alive in the artist's innovative approach to material and technique.
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"Both the rise and fall of waves in the ocean...
...and the rise and fall of breath in my body...
...the light of everything I see is coming to my eyes in waves."
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BENJAMIN DEGEN
Mare Insularum, 2019 ●
Oil and spray enamel on canvas
36 x 24 in. -
BENJAMIN DEGEN
Mare Insularum, 2019
Graphite on paper
12 1/2 x 8 in. Sheet
14 1/2 x 10 1/2 in. Frame -
BENJAMIN DEGEN
Beach Goer, 2019
Oil and spray enamel on canvas
36 x 24 in. -
BENJAMIN DEGEN
Beach Goer, 2019
Graphite on paper
12 1/2 x 8 1/2 in. Sheet
14 1/2 x 10 1/2 in. Frame
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Night and day, Degen presents two approaches to portraiture in In Waves. Taking its title from a basin on the moon, Mare Insularum proffers an otherworldly rendering of a solitary head framed by the sea. The setting mirrors that of other nighttime scenes— think Way or Mångata— focusing here on the subject's face in moonlight. Green, blue, and purple brushstrokes convey both light and texture, bearded stubble and hair. The seafoam green used to create the effect of light on the water likewise brings interest and depth to the subject's eyes.
With Beach Goer, Degen returns to the sea using a bright yellow daylight cast to color the swirls patterning the subject's face, not unlike those found in Set. The sun radiates over a cloudless sky rendered in intricate marks and patterns as if to emphasize the pulsating motion of the sun's rays. Here, Degen combines movement with portraiture— while the subject is stolid, the landscape around him is abuzz with activity. Where Mare Insularum conveys a quiet serenity, Beach Goer presents the verso. Through his careful mark-making, Degen captures the sensation of being on the beach: the heat of the sun, the cool ocean breeze, and the soothing sound of the waves lapping at our feet.
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"Moonlight, though is a special case- as the light from the moon is reflected light, sometimes it feels like it is being emanated from my surroundings on earth and moving up towards the sky. This pull of the moon is not only the pull of light against its reflection. The moon’s mass pulls on the earth- it is the gravity of the moon that moves the oceans and creates tides."
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BENJAMIN DEGEN
Mångata, 2020 ●
Oil and spray enamel on canvas
40 x 30 in. -
BENJAMIN DEGEN
Autumnal Equinox, 2019
Graphite on paper
12 3/4 x 10 in. Sheet
15 x 12 in. Frame -
BENJAMIN DEGEN
Rise, 2019 ●
Oil and spray enamel on canvas
30 x 24 in. -
BENJAMIN DEGEN
Rise, 2019
Graphite on paper
10 1/2 x 8 1/2 in. Sheet
12 1/2 x 10 1/2 in. Frame
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"The picture of me sketching in the Roman Forum is a picture of me working in the 'studio' that I take with me wherever I go.Many of the ink drawings were started in these 5.5 x 3.5 in. sketchbooks which are in my pocket all of the time. This book is often where I catch the first draft of an idea. It’s also a mini lab where I work things out. I often solve painting problems when I am out of the painting studio. This small sketchbook is an extension of my studio that I work in everywhere and all of the time. I draw on the train; eating lunch; in the middle of the night. I am always drawing."
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RECENT PRESS
The paintings and drawings of “In Waves,” Benjamin Degen’s solo exhibition at Susan Inglett Gallery, are affecting reminders of those commonplace pleasures that we frequently take for granted but that are always deserving of reverence, especially in light of our alienating present: intimacy and human touch. Whether he is depicting two people watching a sunset, or bare feet stepping between seashells, Degen’s mark-making vibrates with an ardor that transforms quotidian experiences into extraordinary events. This is the fleeting stuff that life is made of, the gossamer threads that connect us to each other. - Charity Coleman, Artforum
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Read more of Coleman's review HERE.
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"Be still, my heart: This show isn’t just open online but in the flesh at Susan Inglett Gallery, with wildly intricate but optically aggressive drawings of paintings by Benjamin Degen, a master of texture, color, odd composition, images, and landscapes. The paintings seem to breathe and meet your gaze with enticing effects." - Jerry Saltz, New York Magazine
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See the FULL LIST OF SELECTIONS IN NEW YORK MAGAZINE HERE.
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BENJAMIN DEGEN was born in 1976 in Brooklyn, NY. He received a BFA from The Cooper Union in 1998. Select exhibitions include “Inner Landscapes,” Galleria Anna Marra, Rome, IT; “Painting as a Radical Form,” Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, IT; and “Greater New York,” MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NYC; The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY; Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, IT; The Nerman MoCA, Overland Park, KS; and more.
BENJAMIN DEGEN: In Waves
Past viewing_room