benjamin gardner

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© 2007 benjamin gardner

artist's statement:

Like a poet who uses two different words to form new meaning, I make relationships of images—the intimate interior of a house and the landscape outside—reaped from familiar surroundings to reveal ideas. These ideas seem to center around absence and presence; more specifically, I consider that meaning comes out of the absence, and makes itself present. The "empty space" between the poet's two words, where words encounter and influence each other while still retaining their distinct identities, is the area of activity. It is that which seems void of physical presence that holds the possibility of meaning.

The conversation between inside and outside (be it physical or psychological) remains the strongest idea behind my work. This metaphor of physical space has the ability to be always present yet fleeting in our daily lives—a "background" loaded with meaning because it reflects who we are and how we live.

Recent imagery has focused on handwritten poems, paintings, books, and other objects used to "escape" in the domestic space. The ephemeral nature of these objects reveals a new "interior" and an additional psychological space.