TAKE IT EASY THE HARD WAY
 Jason Benson | January 29 - March 12, 2022

The Suicide of Judas, a segment of the 15th-century fresco by Giovanni Canavesio, depicts the devil pulling his fetal soul from his stomach. And, alongside slip-cast cabbage patch doll faces and folklore-inspired iconography, so does Jason Benson’s 2021 painting Body Parser. Benson’s new series of mosaic paintings and sculptures in his solo exhibition Take it easy the hard way use a combination of handmade tiles and found materials inspired by illuminated manuscripts, medieval art, and seventeenth-century Tibetan medicine paintings.

Speaking to evolving and multifaceted occultism, Benson’s imagery draws from both historical and contemporary animism that he renders in stylized glaze painting and high camp mashup of materials that is both playful and esoteric. Throughout the show, poetic and erotic combinations of words and imagery function as both a form of instruction and an artifact of religious practice, while pseudo-functional sculptures suggest a decorative or DIY impulse commonly associated with tile and grout work.

JASON BENSON
Jason Benson (born 1987, Baltimore) received a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009. He was the co-director of Important Projects in Oakland and Species in Atlanta. He has recently exhibited works at Bodega (New York), Atlanta Contemporary (Atlanta), Et Al. (San Francisco), Regards (Chicago), and at Dream Fair with Bodega (Basel). He lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia.

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ABOVE WORK:
Untitled, Jason Benson
Glazed ceramic, glass tile, and grout on wood panel 16”h x 20”w, 2021