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WAP: Paul Stephen Benjamin
11am - 5pm
2016/2017 Working Artist Project
This round of Working Artist Project was curated by René Morales, Curator, Perez Art Museum, Miami, Florida.
About the Exhibition:
Paul Stephen Benjamin: Pure Black
“The title of the exhibition refers to Benjamin’s exploration of a series of commercial paint shades—Valspar’s Very Black, New Black, and Behr’s Pure Black and Totally Black—applied individually in thick velvety layers to a series of large paintings. While the luxurious surfaces, tonal differences, and inky characteristics of these colors weigh vibrant and dense on the surfaces of Benjamin’s paintings, there lies hovering a constellation of complicated questions related to the artist’s use of color and society’s representation of race. The expression of these shades as “totally,” “new,” and “pure” black (as unique a marketing decision as I have ever seen!) point to the externalization of color as both visual sensation and cultural construct, sensory experience and political category leveraged historically to keep power structures, inequalities, and imperialist forms of occupation alive. Circulating the gallery, it felt clear that Benjamin’s decision to make work with and about black in this fraught sociopolitical moment, where minority communities of all kind are struggling under this administration and racial and ethnic tensions between communities of color and (state) power are at all-time highs, was one of urgent necessity.”
*Amirikhani, Jordan. Art Review: Two Takes on Paul Stephen Benjamins’s Pure Black at MOCA GA. burnaway.org, November 2017
Program Events
- Opening Reception was held at MOCA GA on September 22, 2017.
- Artist Talk was held at MOCA GA on October 26, 2017.
About the Artist:
Paul Stephen Benjamin received his BA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his MFA from The Ernest G. Welch School of Art and Design at Georgia State University. Benjamin is a recent recipient of The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia Working Artist Project. Benjamin will have solo and group exhibitions in 2017 at MOCA GA , The Hyde Park Art Center, The Studio Museum In Harlem and in 2018 at the Telfair Museum’s Jepson Center in Savannah, GA.
In 2016 Benjamin exhibited Black is the Color at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA and his video installation God Bless America at Poem 88. Among his awards to date are the NBAF Visual Artist Award, MOCA GA WAP, Artadia Art Award, Winnie B. Chandler Fellowship, Hambidge Fellowship, The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center Studio Program and the Forward Arts Emerging Artists Award.
Major funding provided by the Charles Loridans Foundation and the Antinori Foundation, with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts. Special thanks to Lifecycle Building Center and American Insulated Glass for providing in-kind material donations for this exhibition.
More info on Paul Stephen Benjamin can be found here.
