The Elliott Louis Gallery

Benjamin Phillips' figures in bronze, primarily representing male bodies, define the nature of sexuality both as anguish and as an axis around which turns the human psyche. The impassive forms are forthright in their exploration of sexuality, but they also concede to a sense of shame about the body, its ugliness and its vulnerability.

"Since 2003, I have been assembling a body of figurative sculptures that reflect the male perspective, loosely based around the literal and metaphorical concept of male virile energy and its influences on our culture. My inspirations for art derive from pre-Christian heroic form, sex, death, and the discomforts that surround modern society's corporeal experience.

By using a classical sculpture material, bronze, and drawing heavily from references to Greek mythology, I strive to quietly subvert the traditions we have grown accustomed to with figurative bronze art by reversing its gender-specific stereotypes. For example, fortitude and self assertion are trademark symbols in art history for masculine expression, while surrender and repose are often reserved for female expression. By exchanging these stereotypes, a new context is exposed for inquiry into both the stereotype and the form. These may be sensitive, even controversial topics to be addressed, but to not inquire would seem to be denying a very basic aspect of human nature.

This project began with my attraction to the physical characteristics and associations with bronze. The material intuitively fit with my ideas surrounding the questions I was asking myself about masculinity and its contemporary as well as historic role in society, both on an individual and on a greater social scale. Bronze's natural permanency compliments my motives in recording insights into the subject as an enduring record and as a stimulus for dialogue into the re-evaluation of our representative cultural record."