Like technology or the instrumental rewriting of history, Grasso's paintings make more immediate the collective experience. Confusion, displacement, disaster, celebration and rebuilding are all at once urgent and elusive. Rather than seeking to present the impossible or particular, Grasso represents something contingent, a re-imagining of what actually exists. This re-alignment of logic makes plastic the anxiety underlying objects in the world – a beehive attacked by paper airplanes, a house collapsing on an empty field and an explosion seen through the foundation of an unfinished home. Here we see the nonsensical apocalypse imminent in all things. 

Ben Grasso was born in 1979 in Cleveland, Ohio and lives and works in New York. He received his MFA from Hunter College in New York, NY and his BFA from The Cleveland Institute of Art in Cleveland, Ohio in conjunction with Edinburgh College of Art in Edinburgh, Scotland UK. Grasso's works have appeared in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and in Europe. Writings on his paintings have appeared in Art in America, The Brooklyn Rail and the Cleveland Free Times. Grasso's numerous accolades include the 2003 The Helen Greene Perry Memorial Traveling Scholarship, the 2002 Joseph McCullough Painting Scholarship Award for excellence in painting and the 2001 Carl Gaertner Memorial Prize. Close to Home is Grasso's first solo exhibit at Kinkead Contemporary.