In Gallery One
In Gallery 1 at Western Exhibitions, BEN STONE will present new sculptures in a variety of media that transform two-dimensional graphics into compelling and uncanny three-dimensional forms. His interest in aberrant human behavior, especially in the context of sports and familial conflicts, continues alongside new forays in abstraction.
Ben Stone delves into the psychology of low self-esteem. With each mysterious and humorous object, he ponders the condition of unnoticed beauty. One source of inspiration is a crude interpretation of a baseball player used for a dog’s chew toy. But in Stone’s vision, the two comically distorted figures become permanent combatants, locked in a poetic struggle. Another bizarre sculpture takes its inspiration and form from a mass-produced low relief of a Spanish galleon, which he has realized in 3D as a representation of ship at sail across the gallery floor
One of the show’s centerpieces is a trophy-like sculpture of a hunting dog that has treed a raccoon, sitting on plain card table decorated in cheap party-store fringe. A set of children’s bedsheets from the 1980’s depicting E.T., the Extra Terrestrial, provide inspiration for a low-relief sculpture sprawling across the gallery walls.
The most recent sculpture of the group is an abstraction that came to him in a dream, a vision that showed him making “the lamest sculpture ever.” Luckily (or not) Stone was able to visualize the form for this show.
This is Ben Stone’s third solo show at Western Exhibitions. His last, in 2010, was reviewed in Art in America by Susan Sondgrass who wrote that “Stone assumes the role of interlocutor, a champion of an art earnest in all its intentions regardless of its humble origins”. His first show at Western Exhibitions, in 2007, was reviewed in Artforum. In a cover story on Stone in New City in 2010, writer Pedro Vélez called Stone’s life-size realist sculpture depicting two drunken baseballs fans attacking a rival team’s first base coach “a fitting homage to our nation’s desperate attempt to cope with the unknown variants brought on by the economic debacle”.
Stone’s work was recently included in “Snail Salon” curated by Adrianne Rubenstein at Regina Rex in Queens, NY and he has work in “A Study in Midwest Appropriation” curated by Michelle Grabner at Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, up through January 12, 2014. His work has been shown at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, DiverseWorks in Houston and in Chicago at Suitable, Ten-in-One and Gallery 400. Stone’s seven-foot tall, 250 pound robot, Nuptron 4000, performed his wedding ceremony in 2004 and is currently moonlighting as the stand-up comedian, Bernie Circuits, recently seen at Club Nutz at both the Museum of Contemporary Art and the NEXT Art Fair in Chicago. Stone received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and his MFA from the University of Illinois-Chicago. He lives in Berwyn and maintains a studio in Chicago.