Ben Shaffer’s Ben Deroy (2007) is part performance, part self-portrait, and part spiritual vision. Often the artist works with the motifs of the counterculture and contemporary non-religious spiritualism. The figure hangs suspended—seemingly ascending—animation. The figure looks like some kind of countercultural superman empowered by myriad alternative experiences, as worthy of myth as the heralded Laocoön.
Ben Shaffer’s works are dynamic installations that integrate sculpture, painting, and performance. His complex pieces often require direct interaction from viewers, eschewing simple subject-object relationships in favor of relational negotiations. Through his makeshift neo- psychedelia, Shaffer explores the legacy of counter-cultural imagery, specifically its fragile utopic horizons and ever-receding promises of enlightenment and transcendence. Shaffer lives and works in Los Angeles, and received his MFA from Claremont University in Southern California.
From suicides, to gang violence, to the epidemic abuse of force by police departments (predominantly against Black men), to school and mass shootings, there is perhaps no more urgent issue in the United States than gun control...
Part of a larger series of photographic works, Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck’s Corrupted file from page 14 (V1) from the series La Vega, Plan Caracas No...
ITALY: A New Collective Landscape at HKDI Gallery – ARTOMITY 藝源 100 Italian designers under 35 / ITALY: A New Collective Landscape Jan 19 – May 19, 2024 / Curated by Angela Rui / HKDI Gallery Hong Kong Design Institute 3 King Ling Road, Tseung Kwan O Northern Territories, Hong Kong +852 3928 2566 Wednesday – Monday, 10am – 8pm hkdi.eu.hk Fresh off its successful debut at Milan’s ADI Design Museum last year, the touring exhibition is on display at HKDI Gallery...
Join Purchase College’s Creative Hub for Graduate Studies in Art Skip to content Richard & Dolly Maass Gallery installation: Lane Sell, “Navelstring” (2023), silkscreen, painting, cyanotype, and assemblage The MFA in Visual Arts at Purchase College, State of New York (SUNY), is a small, selective interdisciplinary program that fosters the artistic, intellectual, and professional growth of students through independent studio work and rigorous academic studies...
Interview with Megan Nugroho and Samuel Alexander Forest - ArteFuse Where do we look for the antidote to the inevitable challenges and disenchantment of living in global metropolises? At Tutu Gallery, Land Language/Bahasa Bumi offers a place of refuge rooted in Javanese landscape and opens up a world in which nature’s intimate immediacy is materialized...
LAB (2013) conjures the body as the trace of a sooty hand appears, spectrally, on a crumpled paper towel...
Ai Weiwei criticises ‘fragile’ state of Western democracy following Sky News interview Art market Museums & heritage Exhibitions Books Podcasts Columns Technology Adventures with Van Gogh Search Search Artists news Ai Weiwei criticises ‘fragile’ state of Western democracy following Sky News interview The dissident artist argues that restrictions manifest more subtly in Europe and the US Gareth Harris 6 February 2024 Share Ai tells The Art Newspaper that the idea that "the West embodied greater freedom of speech and press" is an illusion Courtesy skynews.com The Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei has gone into more detail about his views on censorship in the West after telling Sky News in an interview at the weekend that “in universities, in the media, political sector, everywhere—you cannot talk about the truth”...
One Thousand and One Attempts to Be an Ocean by Yuyan Wang reflects on the experience of not being able to see the world with depth perception...