Perfect Illusion

Exhibit
Overview

Spring Break Art Show • Booth 45

5880 Adams Blvd, Culver City, CA 90232

Feb 16 - First Look, 2pm-5pm

Feb 16 - Opening Night, 5pm-8pm

Feb 17 - VIP Preview, 11am-7pm

Feb 18-20 - Regular Show Days, 11am-7pm

Curator Statement

Perfect Illusion captures future topographical models, structures, human emotions, and video through manipulated truths.  As a group, Ben Ashton, Benzi, Steve Hash, and Brandon Lomax speak to a world that could be bright and happy or one that could easily be frozen or destroyed by those controlled by ego. Each artist explores systemic issues plaguing society into visual and digital art forms that allow viewers to form their own opinion on the hearsay of today.

Curated by Kipton Cronkite.

• Ben Ashton's hyper-realist portraiture and ambitious, immersive installation works combine precision in execution with humor and character, balancing emotive response with a strong contextual foundation. His works are the subject of musings that grow into inspiration or as a means of drawing parallels and reflecting on the current world and contemporary society.

• Benzi's video works are presented in vintage artisan clocks symbolic of a by-gone past. His eternalistic approach proposed there was a time when society was happy and full of bliss. Each video nurtures hearsay from the past, present, and future while observing time in its abstract form. We have created an illusion of certainty based on their integral role in how we live our lives. 

• Brandon Lomax's paintings address issues surrounding the climate crisis: his works are rooted in science fiction futures/post ecology while exploring the process of recreating the earth's ecology and geology in his own interpretation of the environment.

• Steve Hash explores daily objects that are frozen in time putting life into a cast. Without humanity on earth, everyday objects to be humans may no longer exist; thus, creating an illusion of uncertainty around how one exists after the soul exits the body

Curatorial Timeline

In a happier time, humanity was predictable and growing. The exploration of post ecology, moments in time, and video showing happier moments reminds humanity of the past while displaying images that could engage both positive and negative emotions and the fragility of humanity. What we think will never go away, may be a perfect illusion. 

Brandon Lomax

About The Artist

Brandon Lomax is a sculptor and installation artist whose immersive experiences transport viewers through time and space, and back into themselves. His work is process-driven, informed by ecology and artifact and rooted in anthropological study.  Lomax’s site-specific public exhibitions punctuate time by encapsulating history into the rhythm of natural, daily cycles. He engages with ideas of logic, inequality and empathy, and strives to remind participants of their place within the cosmos and beyond. He has exhibited with galleries and art fairs both domestic and international and his work is held in numerous private and institutional collections, including The Bunker in West Palm Beach and the California Botanic Garden. He currently resides on the West Coast of Ireland, where he is studying the formations, flora and fauna of the glaciated karst landscape of the Burren.

Learn More About Brandon Lomax

Featured Work

Ben Ashton

About The Artist

Born in 1983 – to an artist father and a mother who led the creative department of a secondary school – Ben Ashton didn’t set out intending to become an artist himself. He dabbled in music and acting, but saw greater potential for longevity in art, along with infinite possibilities to improve and expand. He went on to study Fine Art at Newcastle University before completing his MA at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, in 2008.  His work has been celebrated in such high-profile projects as the cover art for Rag’n’Bone Man’s record-breaking debut album, Human, as well as AlunaGeorge’s debut Body Music. Both were joint projects with his wife and creative partner, the photographer Fiona Garden. Other notable collaborators include fellow artist and designer Rachel Freires, and the Norwegian artist Damselfrau. Ashton has come to view his work as a personal history. “Because I've painted myself and the people around me for so long… if you were to do a retrospective after I died then you'd be able to see my entire life in painting,” he says. “You'd see someone grow old.” Oil paint is incredibly resilient, he adds. “I think that's what I really like about it. Portraiture has a strange lineage; it's been a part of humanity's means of expression for centuries.” This is the legacy – a wonderfully odd and unique one – that he will leave behind.

Learn More About Ben Ashton

Featured Work

Benzi

About The Artist

Benzi is an NFT artist and digital painter who creates stories through the medium of video. The focus of his video involves filming humans, nature and objects. His work is based on filming artists in their natural form inviting them into his digital painting process which results in visuals from a planet called Benzi — a planet that has no boundaries. Each time he creates new work, he begins by filming and creating with other artists; thus, opening the door to a completely white room where he visually becomes free to create the color videos. His art doesn't exist without artist collaborations and one of his works in the Perfect Illusion exhibition includes the J/Angelbaby collaboration with a movement self-portrait of a fluf metastar. The creation Angelbaby & Benzi delivers a visual conversation between the virtual and physical worlds and includes a singular 1/1 video frame serving as a map for discovering hidden treasures in your imagination.

Learn More About Benzi

Featured Work

Steve Hash

About The Artist

Steve Hash is an American contemporary artist who works primarily in the fields of sculpture and installation art. Born in 1982 into an end-times Christian commune led by his grandfather, Hash grew up off-the-grid in the forests of southern Mississippi largely separated from the outside world. His works explore commonalities within the human experience through recontextualization and disorientation, as well as themes of personal connection, conflict and isolation. His work has been exhibited in institutions and galleries such as the Institute of Contemporary Art, LA Louver, Ann Norton Sculpture Garden (artist-in-residence), The Bunker Artspace, and featured in publications such as Artforum (critics pick) and Forbes (artist spotlight).

Learn More About Steve Hash

Featured Work