NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MILES McENERY GALLERY is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Trudy Benson. WAVES, the artist’s inaugural solo exhibition at the gallery will open on 21 October at 511 West 22nd Street and remain on view through 27 November 2021. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated publication featuring an essay by Charlotte Jansen.

Reminiscent of 1980s computer graphics and early image manipulation programs, Benson’s abstract paintings form a digital language that elicit sensations of nostalgia. Born in 1985, she was among the first of the artists working today who painted on a computer before she painted on a canvas. Benson recognizes the importance of referencing the past while also positioning herself in a place to move and grow beyond the history in which her work developed.

What distinguishes Benson’s work from digital image- making techniques of the past is her attention to the experience of seeing and handling the dynamic nature of paint. Benson delves deeper into the possibilities of painting, into the substance of surfaces, into the delicious suggestiveness of shapes and textures, and into lines in free fall. The evidence and effort of the artist’s hand, the tactile results of her labor, have to be seen in person.

Cables of thick paint and squiggly, frenzied lines engage in a game of painterly layers as geometric shapes, stripes, nets, and various flattened forms emerge, expand, and evanesce across a recessive, planar space. Benson transcends the narrative of digital art by moving beyond the computer screen onto the canvas in an effort to reinforce the way in which we communicate and comprehend an image. These paintings are “puzzles I have to solve,” as the artist puts it.

The works in WAVES are “fizzing with energy, popping with colors (each painting is loosely based on an analogous palette, often interrupted by an unexpected flash, a wobbly line in canary yellow here, a succulent orange stripe there), always land us back inside the work, as if we are in a visual pinball machine. We want to stay inside the work, to explore it,” Jansen remarks.

Fun was had here, and you can feel it. “It’s my solace,” Benson says.