Ben Deroy

2007 - Sculpture (Sculpture)

Ben Shaffer

year born: 1924
gender: female
nationality: Canadian
home town: Louiseville, Canada

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.


Colors:



Related works featuring themes of: » Abstract, » Abstract Landscape, » Automatism, » Bright/Vivid, » Canadian

Arbol y Pelicao (Tree and Pelican)
© » KADIST

Federico Herrero

2009

Federico Herrero’s energetic paintings reflect his experiences on the streets of his native San José, Costa Rica, and in the surrounding tropical landscape...

Untitled (Pasta Painting)
© » KADIST

Scott Reeder

2013

Reeder’s works often start with language—and his Pasta Paintings are no different...

Freeway Series
© » KADIST

Catherine Opie

1994

Although best known as a provocateur and portraitist, Opie also photographs landscapes, cityscapes, and architecture...

Mike and Sky
© » KADIST

Catherine Opie

1993

Like many of Opie’s works, Mike and Sky presents female masculinity to defy a binary understanding of gender...

Tokyo Bay
© » KADIST

Liu Yin

2010

Liu Yin’s cartoon-like paintings and drawings explore the ambivalences of love, nature, and consumerism...

Raven (gun)
© » KADIST

Catherine Opie

1987

In this work, a woman sits on a couch with her shirt pulled up to expose her pierced nipples, which are connected by a chain...

Study from May Day March, Los Angeles 2010 (Immigration Reform Now) and We Are Immigrants Not Terrorists
© » KADIST

Andrea Bowers

2010

The small drawings that comprise Study from May Day March, Los Angeles 2010 (Immigration Reform Now) and We Are Immigrants Not Terrorists are based on photographs taken at a political rally in downtown Los Angeles in which thousands of individuals demonstrated for immigrants’ rights...

Video: Catherine Opie on photographing leading British artists
© » ROYAL ACADEMY

Catherine Opie

Video: Catherine Opie on photographing leading British artists | Blog | Royal Academy of Arts Catherine Opie in the RA Collection Gallery Video: Catherine Opie on photographing leading British artists Read more Become a Friend Video: Catherine Opie on photographing leading British artists Published 8 September 2023 Catherine Opie discusses her portraits of David Hockney, Anish Kapoor, Gillian Wearing, Isaac Julien and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, featured in our free display in the Collection Gallery...

Kerosene Triptych
© » KADIST

Natasha Wheat

2011

Natasha Wheat’s Kerosene Triptych (2011) is composed of three images, one each from the digital files of the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Field Museum tropical research archive...

Apartment on Cardboard
© » KADIST

Chris Johanson

2000

Apartment on Cardboard (2000) is an exterior view of an abstracted apartment building...

Telescopic Pole (Tennis Balls Red) and (Tennis Balls)
© » KADIST

Chadwick Rantanen

2010

Telescopic Pole is an adjustable telescopic pole that extends vertically from floor to ceiling and is held up by its own internal pressure...

Herculine's Profecy
© » KADIST

Juliana Huxtable

2017

Herculine’s Prophecy by Juliana Huxtable features a kneeling demon-figure on what appears to be a screen-print, placed on a wooden table, which has then been photographed and digitally altered to appear like a book cover, with a title and subtitle across the top, and a poem written across the bottom...

#17 Pink
© » KADIST

James Welling

2005

#17 Pink is a photogram, a photographic image produced without the use of a camera...

Mao, who curves himself along the edge of the paper
© » KADIST

Liu Yin

2010

Liu Yin’s cartoon-like paintings and drawings explore the ambivalences of love, nature, and consumerism...

Subject, Silver, Prism
© » KADIST

Brian Jungen

2011

There are several elements to Subject, Silver, Prism ...

Stowe
© » KADIST

James Welling

2006

Welling employs simple materials like crumpled aluminum foil, wrinkled fabric and pastry dough and directly exposes them as photograms, playing with the image in the process of revealing it...

Radical Hospitality
© » KADIST

Andrea Bowers

2015

Bowers’ Radical Hospitality (2015) is a sculptural contradiction: its red and blue neon letters proclaim the words of the title, signaling openness and generosity, while the barbed wires that encircle the words give another message entirely...

Pipe Opening
© » KADIST

Jeff Wall

2002

As suggested by its title, Pipe Opening (2002) depicts a hole in a wood wall exposed by the removal of a pipe...