Jane Benson is an artist who works in sculpture, installation and performance. She was born in Thornbury, England and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BFA from Edinburgh College of Art. She has exhibited extensively in national and international venues that include: PS 1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, Sculpture Center, New York, Socrates Sculpture Park, New York, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, Bury Museum, England, San Jose Museum of Art and the North Carolina Museum of Art. Solo shows include The Mews, Thierry Goldberg Gallery, New York, Underbush, Helen Pitt Gallery, Vancouver, The Chronicles of Narcissism, Black and White Gallery, Chelsea, New York and  Underbush, Roebling Hall, New York.  Benson has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Pollack-Krasner Grant and the Fulbright Scholarship. Her work has been reviewed in publications such as the New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, Artnews, The Village Voice, the New Yorker, Timeout New York, among others. 

As if caught in various stages of molting, my work explores the transition and transformation of both physical materials and aesthetic identity. Works evoke change through an interrogation of the mechanics of representation, relegating it, time and time again, to a game in an endless circle of mimicry. For example, in Wig Head (Ann and Jane) clay portraits are worn as toupees, in Yellow Room (Mother) intricately cut floral wallpaper simulates a thicket of foliage and in Venus, I Love You a prosthetic limb simulates a tree’s branch. Grappling with themes of personal and political identity I explore a variety of mediums that probe the legacies of Conceptualism and Surrealism, and challenge boundaries between sculpture, design and craft. In every phase I find or cut my way toward the pleasure and humor in becoming something else.

I'm currently working on a new body of work called The Splits that expands my practice to collaboration and performance.  The Splits involves the cutting of various string instruments into two halves, along the length, creating two separate instruments. The two halves must then be played together to complete a tune and are, thus, for duets only. Exploring precedents set by the Dadaists, John Cage and Nam June Paik the act of splitting at once destroys the integrity of the instrument as an object, and disrupts the conventional process of aesthetic creation that the instrument traditionally permits. Splitting is not merely an act of destruction, however. Instead, it opens graceful passages for imagined evolution: the split instrument becomes a newly creative instrument, creating not only music, but new communities (the duet).

With a focus on cutting and splicing, regeneration and proliferation I gather work together in installations and performances dedicated to the concept of change.