| Terrifying Signage benjamin harubin 2024 13" x 9" pencil, ink & collage on paper |
| Terrifying Signage benjamin harubin 2024 13" x 9" pencil, ink & collage on paper |
| Inevitably Telepresent benjamin harubin 2025 24" x 18" acrylic, wires & string on eroded wood board |
you're walking through a desert
there are cliffs along one side of your path
you continue walking until you see a cave opening in the cliffside
you climb up and peer into the entrance
in the brilliant light of your phone you see what looks like an ancient temple carved from the solid rock
on the walls are painted reliefs
of innumerable deities ?
a pantheon
pantheons?
this is where you may be feeling a little faint
you seem to intuitively grasp meaning in the intricate art
depictions of stories— hunts, battles, liaisons, romances, conspiracies, cancers—seem to be woven into the background between gods, aspects, demons, angels and agents engaged in constant conversation
the fractal complexity of this buzzing web reveals a history of billions of years of interactions that are color coded like some mad detective's final phase
you see mutations, agglomerations, wars, divorces, permutations, parasitisms, conjunctions, capitulations, cavitations and murmurations
which you also hear—as a dictionary of chanting
the deities speak, the vowels and consonants each a spell that binds you until the next pulse
in horizontal and vertical hierarchies in lawful exchange, but the law requires each iteration to be a little blurrier and more general and more fluid than the one below/before
in the beginning was The Word
BUT
then there was another word
but
you see patterns at every scale until the limits of perception are reached
there is no singular underlying force—unless it is that ultradiffuse radiance reflected off dust grains drifting in the medium of you—the medium of breath
you have a mouth and you shout
in this instant there is an eternal resonance
you are standing in the wave
you are standing waves
| Incipient Spheres benjamin harubin 2024 7" x 10" x 4" acrylic, found objects, black LED, gallon can |
suppose we all feel it
life and death
sorrow and joy
in all the cells of the global organism
the people over there
on the other side of this nascent blob.
we felt it in the mediums
chemical electrical magnetic media.
you don't even need ETs or deities
you can encode information in a connected intelligent system
in any number of ways.
everything leaves a trace
even before the internet was born
even before prokaryote was born.
listen all ye
we are in the jelly
in the aether of ALL of US.
the jelly wiggles
and it's wiggling so much we can hardly find any wiggle room
like a tragic bark upon a romantic painting.
but listen all ye
if you can receive
you can also transmit !
the art:
it clearly shows the incipient Spheres bathed in cold dark dusty plasma
surrounded by the ejected crust of its former existence.
save this work. find out how.
| Will of the People benjamin harubin 2025 14" x 11" acrylics, paper, pencil, ink & plastic scraps on canvas |
| FUD Bombz benjamin harubin 2025 7" x 12" x 7" acrylic, found objects & gallon paint can |
| FUD Bombz benjamin harubin 2025 3/4 view |
I have put everything into one simple to grasp image
| World Relignin benjamin harubin 2025 18" x 10" inkjet print, acrylics, pencil, ink & collage on watercolor paper |
| Soft Plethora benjamin harubin 2025 21" x 16" x 2" acrylic, plaster, polyethylene, glues & paper on found art |
You are Still in the Forest. The Dark and Light.
Still in the Forest benjamin harubin 2025 14" x 10" x 1" acrylics, found objects, cardboard on cotton fabric on OSB |
what puts the sur in surrealism?
what puts the super in super-reality?
pointing to something not seen:
the subconscious, the spiritual, the political, the chemical, the atomic?
techniques of surrealism: the non sequitur, juxtaposition,
they want you to apprehend contradictions
pointing to something not seen
like all art- treacherous images
from Aurignacian caves to Modern Minimalism.
they said they could strip it away
a naked neural impulse
the thing in itself
but somehow even a featureless black cube
connected to everything that it isn't
speaks to all the mass of the universe.