November 21 – January 14, 2024
Artist's Reception - December 19th, 2023 from 4-6pm @WinCAM
The Griffin Museum is pleased to host Jake Benzinger’s Like Dust Settling in a Dim-lit Room (Or Starless Forest) in our satellite WinCAM gallery.
Artist Statement
Like Dust Settling in a Dim-lit Room (Or Starless Forest) constructs a liminal world that explores the intersection of reality, dream, and memory. Through photography, this body of work functions as a mirror, a reflection of my inner psyche and an investigation of identity, relationships, the domestic, and the natural world.
This process, with its focus on the self, is rooted in an attempt to heal. The exploration of ordinary locations, places devoid of people and often characterized by the presence of flora, have functioned as a refuge in my personal life. By frequenting these places, I began to see them as sets, utilizing them to construct my visions. I imbue them with fragments of the people, places, and memories that inhabit my subconscious.
I fail to find stability in the societal constructs of home and family; so I seek to create it in the natural world. Through the dislocation of these places and the infusion of nature into the domestic, this work constructs a fleeting world that lives in ambiguity. This space is familiar yet still foreign; it is a constructed world that visualizes my deepest desires and greatest fears.
About
Jake Benzinger (he/him) is a photographer and book artist based in Rockland, Maine; he received his BFA in photography from Lesley University, College of Art and Design in Cambridge, MA. His work explores the intersection of dreamscape and reality. Through the dislocation of space, he weaves together imagery to construct a world that exists in the liminal, investigating themes of duality, longing, identity, and the natural world.
He is currently a gallery assistant at Blue Raven Gallery and recently had work featured by Fraction Magazine, alongside exhibiting both internationally and in the greater Boston area. His most recent body of work, Like Dust Settling in a Dim-Lit Room (Or Starless Forest), was recently self-published and has sold out of its first edition hardcover books, with a second coming in November, 2023.
