EXHIBITION ARCHIVE
Roadside Attractions
July 20 - September 7, 2024
Ben Bridgers’ work explores “magic, mystery and the perversity of nature,” while his process stays rooted in classical materials and methods. He has maintained an active studio practice for more than 30 years, while continuing his career as an art educator and museum professional. He currently works at the North Carolina Museum of Art as the Manager of Park Collection and Exhibitions.
Bridgers’s earliest influences were the underground scenes of skateboarding and punk music. “Skateboarding in the 1980’s was raw, illegal, and generally, unaccepted,” says Bridgers. “As a teenager, I would occasionally ditch school, go skate, and spend part of my day at the local art museum, to wander the galleries. At the time I wasn’t familiar with art history, but those paintings were more interesting than anything else going on”. Eventually, through his younger years and into formal education, these influences merged with a greater understanding of art and art history. The result is expertly rendered scenes of gritty and twisted subject matter. Each painting features forms that seem almost recognizable, but the compositions follow only their own surreal internal logic. Objects are rendered with detail and technique reminiscent of the old masters, making use of dramatic light and shadow. Ben sees his work as an exploration of “transitory events such as home, landscape, migration, love, loss, absence, and how these themes relate to the natural compulsion to continue”.
STATEMENT
My painting practice involves time; and the realization that this curious alchemy – paint on brush, paint on canvas, paint on paint, continues to hold me, anchored to the process. In the studio where my head spins and my heart beats, I root around in ideas and images from my own experience. The themes include mind wanderings, sensations noticed, feelings remembered – transitory events that have shaken my sense of home – revealing loss, love, and obsession. My work looks to both representation and non-representation, for a middle ground that is imagined, observed, and formed. The dark wells in my paintings are held open by the hopeful threads from painting to painting, each one revealing a new world to help make the next and so on. The process, as Philip Guston said, “…seems like an impossibility, with only a sign now and then of its own light.”
Back Burner
March 14 - May 2, 2020
Ben Bridgers’ enigmatic works combine the hallucinatory perspective of an outsider artist--whose first passion was skateboarding -- with the skills of an accomplished painter who has taught at universities around the country and abroad.
Imagery from zines and crude VHS videos documenting skateboarding and punk music culture informed Bridgers earliest aesthetic sense, along with another passion: art. “Skateboarding in the 1980’s was raw, illegal, and generally, unaccepted,” says Bridgers. “As a teenager, I would occasionally ditch school, go skate, and spend part of my day at the local art museum, to wander the galleries. At the time I wasn’t familiar with art history, but those paintings were more interesting than anything else going on.” He developed a deep appreciation for the artistry of painting as it developed over time, as well as for the visceral process of creating art. He still stretches his own canvas over bars he has made, prepares his surfaces using traditional rabbit skin gesso, and paints in oil, a medium which, like skateboarding, demands patience and practice for mastery.
Bridgers’ juxtapositions of finely detailed figures or forms are often subtly illuminated within a dark void, reminiscent of old masters. “My paintings are deeply embedded in historical and classical methods, materials, and processes while exploring a curiosity with the magic, mystery, and perversity of nature, “ says Bridgers. “I continually return to themes surrounding transitory events such as home, landscape, migration, love, loss, absence, and how these themes relate to the natural compulsion to continue.” Bridgers works on several canvases at a time over many months, as each work gradually reveals itself.
STATEMENT
My painting practice involves time; and the realization that this curious alchemy – paint on brush, paint on canvas, paint on paint, continues to hold me, anchored to this process. In the studio where my head spins and my heart beats, I root around in ideas and images from my own experience. The themes include mind wanderings, sensations noticed, feelings remembered – transitory events that have shaken my sense of home revealing loss, love, and obsession. My work looks to both representation and nonrepresentation, for a middle ground that is imagined and observed, felt and touched, dripped and formed. The dark wells in my paintings are held open by the hopeful threads from painting to painting, each one revealing a new world to help make the next and so on. The process, as Philip Guston said, “…seems like an impossibility, with only a sign now and then of its own light.”