Today’s feature from our FACE exhibition is Ben Durham’s “(He) grew up”, made of graphite text on handmade paper, hand-dug clay, and steel chain-link fence. Read more below and come see this piece at Lisa Sette Gallery through September 24, 2022! • • • In intricately detailed drawings, Ben Durham explores his life and how it intersects with and diverges from the lives of his former childhood friends and grade school classmates. In his words: “It’s important for me, as an artist, to shine a light on that awkward territory between me and my subjects, the societal and cultural differences. I’m trying to lay claim to that territory.” Examining the present-day structures of our national bureaucracies, and the way they perpetuate this legacy of oppression, Ben Durham’s work often portrays the artist’s adolescent acquaintances whose mugshot ended up in the public domain. The subject’s likeness is executed in undulations of handwritten text on handmade paper, and the entire composition is systematically contorted by an underlay of chain-link fence. Durham describes the person he once knew with a series of associative memories, his words the only delineating line. “I strive to find some way to tell the subject’s story and yet I know I will fail to do so,” says Durham. #contemporaryart #contemporary #art #phoenixart #bendurham #handmadepaper #drawing #textart #faceexhibition #groupshow #summershow