Like many things, painting can make our experiences more immediate and recast them in new possibility. My painting does not seek to present something impossible or particular; instead, it represents something contingent, a re-imagining of what actually exists, a re-alignment of logic that makes plastic the anxiety underlying objects in the world. A house collapsing onto an empty field, a beehive under attack by paper airplanes, a train forcing its own path through a mountainside—here we see the nonsensical apocalypse imminent in all things.

Ben Grasso lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He holds an MFA in painting from Hunter College and a BFA from The Cleveland Institute of Art. His work has been recently exhibited in The Grand at the Wallace Center at SUNY Purchase; in Out Behind the Shed at the Grossman Gallery at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania; and in The Big Bang at Spaces in Cleveland, Ohio. Previous gallery solo exhibitions include Close to Home at Kinkead Contemporary in Los Angeles, California; Explosion at Agenzia04 in Bologna, Italy; and In My Own Backyard at Sixtyseven Gallery in New York. He was also included in group shows at Crossing Art Gallery, Queens; Bucket Rider Gallery, Chicago; and ECA Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland. Grasso’s work was featured and reviewed by Art in America, Beautiful/Decay Magazine, and Harper’s Magazine. Ben is represented by Thierry Goldberg Projects in New York.

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