Jane Benson
"Mary Shelley Monster, Vol. II, Chapter IV", 2024
Archival ink on polyester film, iridescent acrylic, sound
Framed: 23 x 16 x 1 ½ inches (58.4 x 40.6 x 3.8 cm)
Courtesy of the Artist and Paula Cooper Gallery

Selected by Linda Norden

Jane Benson (b. 1973 UK) is known for interventions that combine, collapse, and cross-pollinate literature and found objects. Benson’s multidisciplinary and research-based approach spans the mediums of sculpture, sound, digital prints and drawing. In layered works, Benson splits, fractures and skews archetypal structures, fake plants, flags, musical instruments, only to reassemble them through her investigative practice to reveal, reinterpret and regenerate a rigid societal framework based on systems that have been cemented in place over the course of history, such as patriarchy, sexism. Recent notable one-person exhibitions include “Dodo Notes”, Gallery Shilla, Seoul (2023), “Jane Benson: Re-assembly”, Paula Cooper Gallery, Palm Beach (2022), "Jane Benson: Song for Sebald", 12 Rooms, Kewenig Gallery, Berlin, Germany (2022), “Half-Truths”, Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati (2017), “Finding Baghdad” (2016), Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, FL, “Faux Faux (Lobby Life)” (2018), Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY. In 2012 Benson received a New York City Department of Cultural Affairs commission, through the Percent for Art program, to create a permanent public artwork, “Mirror Globe (Mapping the New World)”. She has been the recipient of numerous awards and residencies including the Fulbright Scholarship, the Pollock-Krasner Grant and the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program Residency (2022). Her work is included in public collections such as Manchester Gallery, UK, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the Soros Foundations, New York. Benson’s first Monograph, “A Place for Infinite Tuning” was published by Skira and The Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati in 2019.