Gallery Exhibition Dates: June 4 – July 31, 2021
West coast artists Paul Turounet and Brian Benfer are celebrated for their work in photography and ceramics, respectively, yet to bind either artist to media would be reductive. More truly stated, their practice embodies a flexibility attuned to the nuance of context. Turounet and Benfer both work in various media, with intention sharpened towards employing and extracting the material’s every quality and foible. The work of these artists share a concern for the evidence of life-history: gesture through form, mark through time. The emotion of action-past is the drumbeat of their shared subtle subject. This gallery exhibition is the first presentation of their work together.
Paul Turounet’s work explores the psychology of place. Turounet is now 10 years into a photographic survey on Contemporary America; Somewhere Out There Something is Happening catalogs spaces of national history and conscience – what is past is prologue. Somewhere Out There Something is Happening has contemplated numerous sites, each presented as a series of multiple-image vignettes. Unfolding chapters from across the United States compose this rich, nuanced body of work. Evidential studies reveal scenes the artist encountered in such settings as the rolling hills of Wounded Knee, memorials for the victims of the Pulse Nightclub shooting, the aftermath of a EF5-rated tornado in Joplin, MO, the remains of Manzinar War Relocation Camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II, and the light streaming through a Mississippi forest where Civil Rights champions met a tragic fate. Both hyper-specific and alarmingly familiar, Turounet’s work strikes as intimate and palpable. Turounet’s practice seeks to honor the history of place through reflection and remembrance. To journey and pause in space is as much the locus of his artwork as the pilgrimage, or even the memorial created. Image becomes artifact, the means by which viewers may access and contemplate these same emotions and spaces.
Brian Benfer’s work is more specific and self-referential, yet it is executed in a way that erases hierarchy. Subjects and output bear tremendous personal weight, but are rendered in a way to uphold complete anonymity, and even challenging recognition. We are to be confused so we can learn to question. Benfer will break our expectation to enlighten us to the sheer beauty in the nature of mark, the influence of time. In Benfer’s POP (pieces on pedestals) series ephemera of daily life become akin to keepsakes, personal memorials, or totems; some find formal companions and smart perch. Like many of us, Benfer will collect objects of interest and keep them. Perhaps the artist who shares a birthday with Duchamp could neither deny the beauty of naturally existing objects nor resist the urge to use inversion to elevate and recontextualize mundane personal treasures by placing them atop a thoughtfully executed ceramic pedestal of fired slab-ceramic painted with wall primer (as a “normal pedestal”).
In All that remains, we harmonize the languages of Turounet and Benfer, choosing to exhibit works that share overlapping formal qualities and conceptual impetus with the intent to urge our more careful thought and reflection, not only of the spaces and objects we may encounter, but the means by which we encounter them. This gallery exhibition asks we consider action more deeply. What is sacred? How do we choose to interact with the world? Where is the proof of our intention? These are questions asked without words, stories told without diction.
The most substantial part of memory exists essentially undetected. Physical, psychological, its essence speaks through what remains. Without defined boundaries or specific sensibilities, mark provides a sincerity incapable of fabrication. We find examples of entities and experiences that have created their own corporeity. As we engage, we acknowledge the physical and psychological contribution, and encounter what remains as markers of a specific moment in time. – Brian Benfer
About the Artists:
Paul Turounet received his MFA in Photography from the Yale University School of Art in 1995. He has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship and two grants from the Trans-Border Institute. He is most celebrated for work along the US-MX border (Tierra Brava, Bajo la Luna Verde, and Estamos Buscando A), which has exhibited predominantly across the southwestern United States and Mexico. Related handmade artist’s books have been recognized by the Humble Arts Foundation, Paris Photo – Aperture Foundation, and the New York Times.
Brian Benfer earned an MFA from Rutgers University in 2003. Benfer’s interests root in the physical memory and psychological residue objects reveal when contemplated. His work has exhibited widely across the US from Seattle to Houston, Minneapolis to Providence and internationally in Lithuania and has been the subject of notable press, particularly for work in clay. This is his first show with the Gallery.
RELATED EVENT:
Virtual Artist Talk : Artist Talk Brian Benfer & Paul Turounet
Thursday, June 3, 2021 | 4pm
Hosted by the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology
Watch anytime on Sitka’s YouTube
60 min run: 5:30 min. welcome-intro followed by artist talk + Q&A