KRISTOPHER BENEDICT
TREE STREETS

Opening Reception: Saturday, April 21, 2018 from 4:00 to 8:00 PM

On view through May 26, 2018

The current exhibition of new paintings by Kristopher Benedict are dynamic colorful abstractions rooted in representational elements of suburban landscape. Yet, they unfold, collage and coalesce to reveal the dream-like and hallucinatory experience of suburbia from the artist’s point of view. 


David Richard Gallery, LLC 
New York Venue – 211 East 121st ST.
New York, NY 10035 
P: 212-882-1705
www.davidrichardgallery.com 


David Richard Gallery is pleased to announce the upcoming presentation, Kristopher Benedict, TREE STREETS, the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. The opening reception will be Saturday, April 21, 2018 from 4:00 to 8:00 PM. The exhibition will remain on view through May 26, 2018 at the Gallery’s New York venue located at 211 East 121 Street, New York, New York 10035, P: 212-882-1705. A digital catalogue will be available online. 

The paintings in Kristopher Benedict’s TREE STREETS take as their subject the suburban landscape and the artist’s subjective experience of it. Like the suburbs, the paintings can be characterized by constant transitions and shifting contexts. A feeling of precariousness and disconnectedness is pervasive in spite of possibly friendly and familiar trappings. TREE STREETS presents imagery (often homes, telephone poles, tree lines, strolling figures) and abstract painting structures that are constructed and dismantled throughout the painting process. The sense of dislocation that Benedict creates in the work is an apt point of entry, and is seen both as a representation of physical spaces apart from others – the city’s outskirts, the public park, and the artist’s studio, for example - and as a psychological state.

Another point of departure for the work is the genre of landscape painting, which often proposes a shared point of view between the viewer and the artist, and seeks to offer a welcoming expanse of illusionistic depth to be surveyed. TREE STREETS presents a vision of the landscape genre that does not provide this traditional entry point. Instead, these paintings look to create a dialogue between familiarity and uncertainty, as layers of paint simultaneously obscure what was previously legible and coalesce into new arrangements. 

TREE STREETS connects to the artist’s biography and find him interpreting his newfound life in suburbs in a way that is both critical and empathetic. He writes:

“I live in a suburban town outside of Philadelphia and, specifically, in a section of that town they call the tree streets. Most cities and towns have an area like this - Maple Lane, Pine Road, Beech Street. I happened to arrive at the tree streets. Like many folks who wind up living in the suburbs, it was a practical fit more than an aspiration. The idea of arriving somewhere or arriving at something is important to the paintings.”

“As I find it now, the suburban experience is dream-like and hallucinatory. I am outside of it and simultaneously in it. The place presents aesthetic pockets and disconnected leaps in time and form (just like Robert Smithson’s Passaic, NJ). It is full of competing foci and all stages of natural life and synthetic process. The lawns of the tree streets feature signs that read “Hate has no home here” as well as an occasional MAGA banner. There is an elementary school in the heart of the neighborhood and a massive retirement home that looms on its boundary. Some streets have no streetlights and walking the dogs late at night is a voyeuristic fantasy. The paintings in TREE STREETS aren’t literal depictions of these experiences, but they are connected to and derived from them.”


About Kristopher Benedict:

Kristopher Benedict's work has been exhibited in solo shows at Sue Scott Gallery in New York, Gallery Diet (now Nina Johnson) in Miami, Paris London Hong Kong in Chicago, Tiger Strikes Asteroid in Philadelphia, and the Goodyear Gallery at Dickinson College among other venues. Group exhibitions include those at the David Petersen Gallery in Minneapolis, CTRL gallery in Houston, the University of Florida, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, and the Orlando Museum of Art. His work is in the public collections of the RISD Museum, Flint Institute of Arts, and The Orlando Museum of Art. He holds a BFA from The Cooper Union, and an MFA from Columbia University. Benedict lives in Philadelphia and teaches painting at West Chester University in West Chester, Pennsylvania. 


About David Richard Gallery:

Since its inception in 2010, David Richard Gallery has produced museum quality exhibitions that feature Post War abstraction in the US. The presentations have addressed specific decades and geographies as well as certain movements and tendencies. While the gallery has long been recognized as an important proponent of post-1960s abstraction—including both the influential pioneers as well as a younger generation of practitioners in this field— in keeping with this spirit of nurture and development the gallery also presents established and very new artists who embrace more gestural and representational approaches to the making of art as well as young emerging artists.

In 2015 David Richard Gallery launched DR Projects to provide a platform for artists of all stripes—international, national, local, emerging and established—to present special solo projects or to participate in unique collaborations or thematic exhibitions. The goal is to offer a fresh look at contemporary art practice from a broad spectrum of artists and presentations. Opening the second location in New York in 2017 exposes the gallery’s artists to new markets, institutions and collectors.

Associated Exhibitions

• Kristopher Benedict TREE STREETS
  April 18, 2018 - May 26, 2018
  MORE INFO

Associated News

• May 13, 2018
  Kristopher Benedict 'TREE STREETS'
  International Art Exhibitions, 05/13/2018
  
  


• May 9, 2018
  Kristopher Benedict
  Wall Street International Magazine, 05/09/2018
  
  


• April 18, 2018
  Press Release - Kristopher Benedict 'TREE STREET'