Jason Benjamin - Poems In An Elemental Garden

POEMS IN AN ELEMENTAL GARDEN JASON BENJAMIN

Jason Benjamin - Poems in an Elemental Garden 16 October to 8 November 2014

JASON BENJAMIN - POEMS IN AN ELEMENTAL GARDEN There are no people in any of the landscapes in Jason Benjamin’s latest exhibition, Poems in an Elemental Garden. There are hardly even animals, apart from a few birds, and most of the works appear untouched by anything to do with human concerns. Benjamin is drawn to landscapes of monumental vacancy, where nature is most alone. Meticulously rendered, and capturing all four elements – earth, air, wind, fire – the works in this show quietly gesture towards a vastness far beyond their own edges. The stars in We just knew he’d be there remind us of the immensity of the skies; the wash of water in A Clear Mind (2) reminds us of the ocean’s endless roll. The sheer expanse of the works makes us feel dissolved, if only for a moment, by our own insignificance.

We become like the birds drifting across the sky in You’re here with me now. Gone in a moment.

Every one of Benjamin’s landscapes is like this. For all their emptiness, they are saturated with feeling. His genius lies in the way feeling is heightened by being played out against the vast indifference of nature. Each painting is pared back until it perfectly articulates a mood or yearning, whether it’s contemplation or acceptance or the unending desire to be a safe harbour for our children. The feelings his landscapes evoke may soon disappear, each rush of joy or loss fading as quickly as the colour in a sunset sky, but this does nothing to diminish them. Quite the contrary. His works suggest it’s the fleetingness of an emotion that makes it true.

This tension between the everlasting and the quickly vanishing, between the immense and the very small, plays throughout the works in this exhibition, none more so than

We just knew he’d be there. Benjamin talks about this painting by referring to the final passage in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. Sherriff Bell recalls that after his father died, he had a dream in which the old man rode past him on a horse, cradling fire in a horn, without acknowledging his son. The old man rode off “in all that dark and all that cold” and Sherriff Bell knew that whenever he, the son, got where he was going, his father would already be there and he would have lit a fire. We all long to already be where our children are heading, ready to warm them when they arrive. For our children, more than anyone, we want to be eternal: the fire on a hill that never goes out. The fact that we are as evanescent as a flame is both a tragedy and the best reason to clutch our children close.

Benjamin hasn’t painted still lifes for five years but they fit perfectly here. What could be more fleeting than a peony in late bloom and the flap of a butterfly’s wing? The landscapes play with our sense of time, but the still lifes take this notion and dial the volume up to high. Drenched in glorious light, these are works that luxuriate in their temporality. They are operatic in the extravagance of their emotion and their refusal of the strictures of good taste. Benjamin’s flowers are like the soprano bursting into full voice at the climax of her performance. She may be a little overdressed, perhaps the storyline is even a little cheesy, but her voice spears straight into the heart of everyone listening. In that moment, she is truly magnificent.

It’s as much as we can ask for.

Catherine Keenan October 2014

Jason Benjamin I don’t think she knows what i’m feeling, 2014 oil on linen 120 x 120 cm

Jason Benjamin I’m with her, 2014 oil on linen 120 x 120 cm

Jason Benjamin My heart’s racing too, 2014 oil on linen 120 x 120 cm

Jason Benjamin There’s such a lot of world to see (for India B), 2014 oil on linen 120 x 120 cm

Jason Benjamin We just knew he’d be there (for Ed & Spencer), 2014 oil on linen 120 x 180 cm

Jason Benjamin You say the things I cant say, 2014 oil on linen 80 x 120 cm

Jason Benjamin You’re here with me now, 2014 oil on linen 120 x 180 cm

Jason Benjamin Night Water - A Clear Mind, 2014 oil on linen 30 x 100 cm

Jason Benjamin Day Water - A Clear Mind, 2014 oil on linen 30 x 100 cm

Jason Benjamin Dusk Water - A Clear Mind, 2014 oil on linen 30 x 100 cm

16 October to 8 November 2014