HEAD CREAM :: Neil Bender

11.18.17

Main Gallery

“Fabrics you give your boy of highest sheen,

The richest garments men have ever seen,

You’ve laden him with all that he can bear.

He’ll leave you nude, without a rag to wear.”

--“Martial’s Epigrams” (4.28) as translated by Garry Wills

Tempus Projects presents Head Cream, recent works by artist Neil Bender. Head Cream is an assortment of paper objects floating a disjointed stage of flattened, painted limbs.

Bender’s work is the epitome of Boucher’s quote: “I detest the natural world because it is too green and poorly lit.” The aim of the work is to seduce and give pleasure through imagery that is social and accessible, that loves the idea of surface as a way of picturing honest yet mischievous belief systems. The work is a communicative device that takes imagery that is exploited by our popular culture and forms a new interface for open dialogue, with an interest in pleasure, sensuality, and black humor as the starting points. Through a restructuring of provocative images, he hopes to open up new contents that are potentially morally questionable.

Neil Bender was born in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, and currently lives and works in Florida. His work has been shown nationally and internationally, at the Front in New Orleans, the Boston Center for the Arts, the CUE Art Foundation in New York, the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Saltworks Gallery in Atlanta, the Boston Center for the Arts, Fe Gallery in Pittsburgh, Palazzo Casali in Cortona, Italy, and many other venues. His work was represented by Bleu Acier Gallery in the Bridge Art Fair during Art Basel Miami 2006-8 and Art Chicago 2007, and shown in San Juan at Circa PR in 2010. He received the Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant in 2002 after getting his degree from the University of Georgia, attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2004, and the ‘Painting’s Edge’ program in Idyllwild, CA in 2006 and 2008.