Ben Steele blurs the line between pop culture and art history, and throughout the month of May his paintings will be on view in a solo show at Giacobbe-Fritz Fine Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
After Steele graduated from the University of Utah, he moved to the small town of Helper, Utah, a former mining and railroad town that has become something of an art colony. “There were a few professors that had retired and they were teaching workshops out here,” he recalls. It was then that he began to develop his signature style, which plays with pop culture and history.
O’Keffee Farms, oil on canvas, 60 x 70”
“I had found that I really liked painting crayons, and then that led me into coloring pages,” he says. “But I didn’t necessarily want to do imagery that was too childish.” He thought about how he could incorporate art history to the works and created his first coloring page-inspired painting using the Mona Lisa as his subject.
“From there it snowballed into realizing I could use any kind of cultural or art history reference and expand on it,” he says.
Some of his works at the Giacobbe-Fritz show will have a Southwestern spin, including O’Keeffe Farms, which features one of Georgia O’Keeffe’s iconic cow skulls painted on the side of the barn. “It’s a location that makes sense,” Steele says. “O’Keeffe is obviously an icon of the Western art world and it was interesting to put her work into a new context.”
The work of Jeff Koons will also make an appearance in the painting Kitsch-a-Sketch,which incorporates an image of one of Koons’ balloon dog sculptures as an Etch A Sketch drawing. “Even though I’m painting it with my hand, I wanted it to have the same feeling as an actual Etch A Sketch,” Steele says. “So it looks like an unbroken line that’s zigzagging back and forth.”
Kitsch-A-Sketch, oil on canvas/plexi frame, 20 x 30”
The “screen” shows the patina of age, representing a toy that’s been used over and over again. To create the red Etch A Sketch frame, Steele built a wooden model and had a fiberglass version fabricated.
Also on view will be Dispensing Decadence,part of his series of PEZ Dispenser paintings, this one featuring Audrey Hepburn. “The ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ imagery and color is so classic, and the PEZ dispensers are such a fun thing that catch people’s eye,” he says. Both Hepburn and the classic candy are subjects that inspire nostalgia, but the unexpected juxtaposition of the two will make viewers stop and take a second look.
Dispensing Decadence, oil on canvas, 52 x 27”
“The artwork of Ben Steele lies between a playful reinvention of cultural icons—artistic masterworks, well-trodden American symbols, imagery from Hollywood—and the artist’s investment in color, form, and light. The resulting paintings are intended to spark reflection on the part of the viewer,” says gallery owner Deborah Fritz. “So often what is over-exposed is also overlooked—familiarity halts critical thought and we come to see without really noticing. By offering a fresh perspective on these subjects, Steele hopes that viewers will reconsider these parts of their visual culture and perhaps find new meaning.” —
Giacobbe-Fritz Fine Art 702 Canyon Road • Santa Fe, NM 87501 • (505) 986-1156 • www.giacobbefritz.com
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