Working in video, drawing, painting, sculpture, textile, sound, and performance, I imagine a gentle rebirth of masculinity and male-coded activities, clothing, and behavior. Discarding and subverting traditional masculinity, subjects are left uninhibited in cosmic and ambiguous spaces, like new constellations of unknown deities. Interactions and activities could be perceived as combative or playful, collaborative or contentious.

In videos, vividly colored shapes undulate and shift from landscapes to fabric prints to anonymous patterned men in reflective masks dancing in reverie to original musical compositions. In paintings and drawings, figures, landscapes, starfields and textured fabric backgrounds are combined to form both earth-bound marvels and galactic wonders. People, animals, and combinations of both dance or pose majestically amid ambiguous backgrounds of stars, distorted gold leaf, or patches of brightly colored fur. The stretched fur fabric pieces conjure both soft fuzzy domiciles and also the stretched skins of hunted mythical beasts. The colorful portrayal of clouds, trees, and figures set amongst a fantastic field of stars elevates our broken world to a bright, ideal future. Always, the soft, peaceful, interior domesticity of home life is entwined with traditional masculine norms.

Ben Pinder is an interdisciplinary artist who creates a surrealist cosmology imagining a gentle rebirth of masculinity and male-coded activities, clothing, and behavior.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Ben was raised in Vermont, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania and is currently in New York. Among other venues Ben’s work has been exhibited at Brooklyn Arts Council, the Icebox Project Space in Philadelphia, Smack Mellon, Wassaic Projects, The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, and the O+ Festival. He received his Masters in Fine Art from Pratt Institute and now lives with his family in the Hudson Valley.