Kim Benson | Long Sweet Gone
HAIR+NAILS and TOA Presents are pleased to announce Kim Benson — LONG SWEET GONE, an exhibition of paintings that continue Benson’s process of “doing and undoing” her rich, abstract surfaces.
References to Renaissance paintings, whether in image or color palette, populate many of Benson’s canvases, establishing a historical ground for exploration and excavation. Materially and metaphorically, representations dissolve under a multitude of strategies that include sanding, stenciling, casting, and extruding, as well as more traditional modes of application by brush. The result of this ouroboric process is LONG SWEET GONE, a series of hallucinogenic abstractions that at times feel solid and sculptural like a stucco wall and at others like a gossamer curtain undulating in a soft breeze.
In navigating the history of painting as well as her own excessive processes of repetition and erasure, time emerges as a conceit in Benson’s work; viewer and artist are together suspended in geological, art historical, personal, and anthropocenic time scales materialized in paint.
Artist Bio
Kim Benson received her MFA from University of Wisconsin, Madison, and her BFA from the College of Visual Arts in St. Paul, MN. Her paintings have previously appeared at HAIR+NAILS in her solo exhibition HELL DAISY (2020) and group exhibitions The Human Scale at Rochester Art Center (2021), NADA Chicago Invitational (2019), HAIR+NAILS at 9 Herkimer in Brooklyn (2019), and Relief—Three Fresh Approaches to Building Surface (2018). Benson’s work has also appeared at MANA Contemporary (Chicago), Museum of Wisconsin Art (West Bend, WI), Plains Art Museum (Fargo, ND), Bockley Gallery (Minneapolis). She has attended residences at La Macina di San Cresci, Adams State University, McCanna House with the North Dakota Museum of Art, Jentel Foundation, and the Soap Factory. Benson is an adjunct professor of art at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
Gallery Hours
Walk-ins welcome:
- Friday, November 4: 11am to 2pm
- Saturday, November 5: 11am to 2pm
- Friday, November 11: 11am to 2pm
- Saturday, November 12: 11am to 2pm
- Thursday, November 17: 5pm to 7pm
- Friday, November 18: 11am to 2pm
- Saturday, November 19: 11am to 2pm
Appointments can be scheduled 7 days/week via hairandnailsart@gmail.com and rob@theorangeadvisory.com.
This exhibition is proudly part of TC Arts week October 12-16, 2022. Learn More.
Image: Detail of Your Joy Shall Be Complete (2022) oil and enamel on canvas
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