August 10 – September 1, 2013
Opening Reception: August 10, 7 – 9 PM

"If one were to run across one of Ben White's paintings at a suburban garage sale or in the dusty backroom of a thrift store, one would snap it up immediately, display it prominently in one's hip Silverlake-adjacent living room, then post it immediately on Facebook, hoping to learn more about the quixotic outsider genius that produced it. The Council of Nicaea supervising the faking of a moon landing? Unimpeachable. Liberace among the Hyenas in the Colloseum? Fabulous!"
-Doug Harvey, from a forthcoming monograph of Ben White's Ruin Upon Ruin series from Insert Blanc Press. 2013.

"Too smart to accept the subtle prejudices, insidious conformity, and insipid evils of the suburban middle class, White is also too proud to disown its influence, reject its charms or deny his own complicity. Consider the paintings of Ruin Upon Ruin a prog rock riff on the somatic spell of the Valencias of this world. The sickly sweet aesthetics of the embarrassing present intermingle with imagery, symbols, and tropes from throughout human history. Ambitious in scope and subject matter, yet humble in their formal delivery, the images are at turns funny and horrific. They seduce and alienate us, mixing subject matter that entrenched cultural sects would rather keep segregated, and they challenge our idea of what knowledge we privilege, what we discard, and what we are willing to accept from art. At first blanche they feel unsettling and wrong, but White, recovered Christian rocker that he is, is not interested in affirming our faith in at and culture. He is interested in testing it."
-John Hogan, from a forthcoming monograph of Ben White's Ruin Upon Ruin series from Insert Blanc Press. 2013.