Maris
Benson perceived the power of repetition early in his careeer.
Over more than three decades as a sculptor in Humboldt County, Benson
has created
works of art that explore the creative possibilities of repeated
form and serial process. His work conveys a constancy of vision, one
that stresses
the primacy of abstraction, the visual expression of energy and
its release, and an acute sensitivity to materials. Born in Latvia
during World War II,
Benson arrived with his mother, grandmother, and younger brother
in Aberdeen, Washington in 1950. He studied art at the University of
Washington, where
he earned a B.F.A., then moved eastward to earn an M.F.A. at
Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Since 1970, Benson has
taught sculpture
at Humboldt State University. Twice a finalist for the prestigious
Prix de Rome, Benson returned to Europe for the first time since childhood
during a sabbatical leave in the early 1980s. Although primarily
a worker
in metal, he spent five months at Pietrasanta-workplace of Renaissance,
Baroque, and modern sculptors Michelangelo Buonarotti, Gianlorenzo
Bernini, and Henry Moore-demystifying the art of stone and internalizing
the classicism
of Italy. Since the early 1990s, he has traveled to Latvia five
times in order to select students from the Art Academy in Riga for
study in
the United States. In his work over this period of more than
thirty years, from his geometric treatment of volume in the 1970s to
his serial exploration
of plane in the 1980s and line in the 1990s, Benson has developed
a distinctive body of sculpture.
All
of Benson's work is untitled, freeing it from literal associations and
allowing the viewer to focus on its pure visual form. In the 1970's,
Benson was sometimes compared to the minimalists, artists like Donald
Judd, Carl Andre, or Dan Flavin, who used industrial materials and simple
geometric shapes as a way to pare their work down to elementary volumes
and expose the essence of art's objectness. These artists, like Benson,
questioned many of the traditional practices of sculpture, including
the placement of work on a pedestal. Some of Benson's works lean
casually
against a wall, playfully denying a separation between the viewer and
the art. The geometric patterns created from alternating sections of
acrylic and machined aluminum, often extending to a length of six to
seven feet, result from a carefully calculated balance of square and
circular shapes, matte and reflective surfaces, concave and convex
protrusions.
When color is introduced, such as radiant orange or opalescent blue,
the works acquire a jewel-like luminosity. Although some minimalist sculpture
has been dismissed as an expression of technological domination and brute
force, Benson's work displays a sensitivity and sensuality that belies
such facile criticism. The rhythmic patterns of Benson's repeated forms
transport the viewer, instead, to a transcendent realm of classical
calm.
Benson's
work in the 1980s underwent a dramatic transformation. Less overtly
serial than the work from the previous decade, these pieces continue
to display the sculptor's need to create tension and repose, to balance
chaos with order, and to combine the human with the machined. Most
of these works are assembled from sanded aluminum and clear plexiglass.
Some are unpedestaled floor pieces, with dramatically cantilevered
extensions held in place by transparent planes. Others sit atop geometric
white bases, their curvilinear arcs of metal intersecting the tiled
planes of glass. The surface of these pieces, as in the work from the
previous decade, remains a principle concern. The trace of the artist's
activity is clearly evident in the burnishing of the aluminum and elegantly
contrasts with the pristine finish of the untouched translucent pane.
These sculptures convey a beauty and complexity made possible by a
process of extended and repeated experimentation.
Another
change occurred in Benson's art during the 1990s. If the work from
the 1980s displays a methodical exploration of planar space, these newer
pieces reveal a shift in the artist's attention toward the most basic
formal element, line. Line in these works takes many forms; thick
cords arc gracefully over a geometric plane, sinuous strands coil around
a geometric pillar, slender fibers twist into cable, and metal wires
bunch together in a mass suggestive of human tresses. Benson refers
to some of these sculptures as sentinels or guardians, and indeed their
totemic character suggest a delicate balancing of mysterious, yet universal
forces. The parts are cast separately, then assembled, and the traditional
patina employed on their surface conveys the essence of their bronze
medium. Repetitive, not in the literal sense of Benson's earliest work,
these pieces manifest the artistic practice of selecting a formal quality
of sculpture and subjecting it to repeated scrutiny Such inquiry demands
the sculptor's continual return to basic forms-lines, plane, and geometric
volume-in order to uncover the intrinsic properties of abstraction.
