benicia gantner

Benicia Gantner’s artwork examines the relationship between constructed and natural environments as expressed through landscape and architecture. She defines urban culture’s relationship to nature as an expertly fabricated ruse, a mirage in which nature is seen as pristine, wild, and mysterious. Instead of presenting a traditional illusionistic image of the natural world using paint or other conventional art materials, she flattens the picture plane using synthetic materials like acrylic and adhesive sign vinyl, concrete, and caulking. Stripes become stand-ins for the verticality of the built world, and reductive silhouettes of leaf and flower forms swirl and collect on slick acrylic surfaces. By using industrial materials, Gantner reinforces the idea that our experience of the natural world is largely synthesized, like a guided garden tour: mediated and highly structured.