Marc Benja / Nancy Fleischman: Penalty
@ old friends
3405 N Paulina St Chicago, IL 60657
Opening Friday, August 16th, from 5PM - 9PM
On view through Saturday, September 21st
Old Friends is pleased to present Penalty, a dual exhibition featuring paintings by Marc Benja (b. 1970, Chicago, IL) and sculptural works by Nancy Fleischman (b. 1980, Chicago, IL). Both artists explore the fragile and impermanent mechanics of the body, each offering a unique reflection on chronic pain.
Penalty relays an essential disruption of physical equilibrium. Benja and Fleischman negotiate sensitivity and severity, embedding their bodily experience into the works. Through acts of wounding and repairing, the two artists offer a sincere exploration of the punitive cycle of pain.
Many of Marc Benja’s paintings depict improbable structures, unstable and imbalanced. His works are composed of distinct layers with years between them, painted on either side of a debilitating injury. Turbulent, muted revisions obscure candy-toned foundations. Benja’s repetitive brushstroke creates a static harmony between two disparate chronologies as the artist works to both return to and rewrite history. A semitransparent wash of blue on the surface of Slow Fog, 2023, covers a horizon line, the intermediate landscape undefined and unmade.
Nancy Fleischman uses fragility to convey her internal theater of pain – slicing, fracturing, and rupturing porcelain skins to translate a felt brutality which rarely manifests visually. Pushing an already fragile material beyond the bounds of its structural security, Fleischman imbues her sculpture with the same bodily vulnerability. Her pieces are improbable, their existence a testament to the labor of preservation.
Works included in Penalty articulate pain as obfuscation of physical order, the bewilderment of the body when stasis is unachievable. Both Benja and Fleischman attempt to soothe, repair, and maintain their mutinous bodies, yet the works reveal a relentless irritant. Ruminating on discomfort, these artists uncover an intimate vulnerability, a skeletal archeology.
Penalty will be on view at Old Friends, 3405 N. Paulina Street, Chicago, IL, from August 16 – September 21, 2024. For more information, please contact the gallery at +1 (917) 971-7566 or office@oldfriendsgallery.com.
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Tags: Chicago, Lakeview, Marc Benja, Marc Benja / Nancy Fleischman: Penalty, Nancy Fleischman, Old Friends
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