Christopher Henry Gallery

The Christopher Henry Gallery is pleased to announce its first solo exhibition of New York based photographer Kelsey Bennett, Hypnagogia.

Contemporary daydreams, Bennett’s narrative constructions frame issues of identity, gender, and sexuality from the perspective of one under the influence.   Combining a strong sense of color with an eye for the graphical gesture, Bennett’s photos vibrate with a subversive formality reminiscent of Sherman’s film stills or William Eggleston’s documents of Americana.

Her characters—variations, certainly, on autobiography—peer out at us from within the cathedrals of their private illusion like children caught at an ambivalent game:  A feisty woman wrestles with an artificial limb; a classic housewife ponders a failed cherry pie; a child gorges on a chocolate world; a bald woman relaxes below shelves lined with wigs. Archetypes of the everyday, Bennett’s subjects seem to hover in a liminal world poised between reality and fantasy.

Bennett’s narratives speak to the subconscious longings, histories, myths, and desires that animate us all, testament to the stuff of our dreams resolving itself into the bright light of day.