Nicole Beno, Endless Loop, 2023, archival inkjet print, 61 x 45.72 cm. Courtesy of the Artist.
Nicole Beno, Forest Tongue, 2023, archival inkjet print, 91.44 x 61 cm. Courtesy of the Artist.
Nicole Beno, Forced Production, 2023, archival inkjet print , 56 x 38 cm. Courtesy of the Artist.
Entanglements
Opening Reception:
Saturday, April 6, 4 – 7 pm
Entanglements is a series of ongoing studies merging digital and manual collage techniques to create surrealist worlds. Through physically cutting and digitally reworking collages, visual elements are stripped from their original context and function. New still lifes of digital and analogue hybrids emerge from the artist’s play with perception, scale, shape, texture, and colour.
Bringing a painterly approach to her collage work, Kitchener and Waterloo-based artist Nicole Beno explores themes of excess, over-consumption, and desire. Layers of photographs, old magazine cutouts, and scanned materials that are otherwise seen as everyday objects are digitally manipulated through a process of cutting, remixing, distorting and merging. Her work is often overloaded with saturated colours and artificial hues, in contrast to natural textures and materials, as a reflection on the anxieties around consumption. Her compositions are filled to the edges with visual clutter, conveying the feeling of being unable to sort through the noise and distraction. Beno’s work is driven by the contradictions she feels around the pressure to produce, to perform, and to purchase – a common sense among those living under capitalism.
Please note this exhibition is wheelchair accessible via the back alleyway.
