Galleri Urbane is pleased to present Done Being Cool, a solo exhibition of new work by painter Benjamin Terry. As the title suggests, the exhibition centers around a rift, a shift, an evolution. What has come before provides a foundation, but the approach has shifted. This is, according to the artist, “not a midlife crisis show, but an anti-midlife crisis show.” Its subtle repositioning represents, Terry says, “me meditating on getting older.”
What it’s like to be happy
Paint, Wood, and Glue
20 x 14”
Humming a little tune
Paint, Wood, and Glue
21 x 16”
Watch:
Get a closer look at the exhibition on video
For more than a decade, the artist has worked with plywood surfaces, but the language of construction has altered. What he may have built as “haphazard, clunky constructions”—raw expressions of material, rough-hewn and almost clumsy—have become more refined and polished. “There’s a lot of construction going on, but it’s buttoned up,” Terry says.
“It’s about me resisting the urge to revert to things that I used to do when I was younger. Embracing my age and knowledge, rather than longing for some notion of what was once cool.”
Shhhh!
Paint, Wood, and Glue
21 x 16”
Installation in-progress
Exhibition Install Images:
“Before I was really into [the surface] getting messed up along the way. I would clamp painted wood while it was still wet,” Terry says. “I was into distressing [the work] while I was making it. Now I’m trying to preserve. There’s this process of keeping everything clean and tidy.”
You and I are Earth
Paint, Wood, and Glue
21 x 15”
Watch:
Benjamin checks in from his Dallas studio to answer some questions about Done Being Cool
Pardoned sins detail
Pardoned sins
Paint, Wood, and Glue
21 x 16”
Alongside runs a love for the godfathers and godmothers of Abstract Expressionism, Terry says, and a relish for “pushing wet paint into wet paint.” While previously, the work’s “soul” would develop through surfaces that bore the mark of the clamp, the scars from the jigsaw, now the artist revels in a new painterly abstraction, a traditional, gestural handling of the medium to better “maintain the integrity of the initial moment of a painting”—more soigné and finessed—albeit filtered through the language of construction.
Benjamin Terry lives and works in Dallas, TX. He received an MFA in Drawing and Painting from the University of North Texas in 2013. He has exhibited work in numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally including Atlanta, Brooklyn, London, Mexico City, San Francisco, Dallas, and Houston. Terry was an artist-in-resident at The Maple Terrace in Brooklyn in the spring of 2018 and 100 West Corsicana in 2020. Curatorial work has become an integral part of his practice with exhibitions curated at Kirk Hopper Fine Arts, Circuit12 Contemporary, Galleri Urbane, and Texas Woman’s University. He was featured in volumes 96 and 132 of New American Paintings, and has received both the Clare Hart Degoyler and the Arch and Anne Giles Kimbrough awards from the Dallas Museum of Art. He is currently a Distinguished Senior Lecturer at the University of Texas Arlington.
Secret Handshake
Paint, Wood, and Glue
21.5 x 16”
Afraid of time
Paint, Wood, and Glue
21 x 16”
Making love to the camera
Paint, Wood, and Glue
21 x 16”
Ambling
Paint, Wood, and Glue
21 x 16”