Danse Macabre
2026
Oil and holographic foil on linen
30 x 40 inches
Current Exhibition:
FEELINGS
September 17 - October 24, 2026
George Benias Gallery
Politechneiou 10, Athina 104 33, Greece
PRESS RELEASE
George Benias Gallery presents Feelings, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Benjamin Kress. The work builds thematically on his previous exhibition Paradise Pavilion at Allouche Benias Gallery in 2022, expanding techniques, materials, and interests the artist has developed over the last three decades.
Kress paints figures that are strange fusions, amalgamating imagery from the back catalogs of art history, religious iconography, pop culture, and the artist’s photography of ephemeral paper constructions and masked self-portraiture as his invented artistic muse, “Nelo.” He combines and hybridizes faces, figures, and landscapes, incorporating visual ruptures and artifacts left by the intentional “misuse” of hybrid imaging software. The resulting images guide his paintings.
The exhibition comprises six oil paintings on linen, and six framed shadowboxes containing mixed-media paintings and sculptural ephemera.
The oil paintings are made using traditional methods, but highlighted with passages of color-shifting holographic foil. Various references are made, including to Caravaggio’s Sick Bacchus, Bruegel’s The Blind Leading the Blind, and medieval Danse Macabre and crucifixion imagery. These are combined with unlikely lighter sources, like Degas’ At the Races, vintage press shots of Farrah Fawcett, and the artist’s photographs of Nelo donning costumes and garlands. The protagonists of the paintings engage in a variety of dreamlike pursuits: sleepwalking through twilight landscapes, engaging in choreomania, or transfixed in ecstatic self-sacrifice.
Counterpointing the oil paintings are the shadowbox paintings. One is unique as the only non-figurative work in the exhibition. Titled This Storm Is an Advantage to the Enemy, the composition serves as the entry point for the exhibition’s world. Referencing a drawing by Henry Darger, it depicts a mysterious, dark portico looking onto the peculiar green atmosphere that accompanies thunder storms. The other five shadowboxes contain variations on a visual theme that Kress calls the Lacrimosas. Derived from images of Our Lady of Sorrows statuary hybridized with photographs of Nelo, the paintings are covered in small glass beads, creating a glittering, jeweled effect. Handmade, pearl-headed pins pierce the paintings from above and below, emerging like tears from some of the paintings’ eyes. Loose pins and glass beads accumulate at the bottoms of the frames like collected tear-drops or rain. The portraits are framed against panels painted as skies evoking different seasons and times of day. Part painting, part reliquary, these works are surreal metaphors of emotional transformation and catharsis.