Ben Sanders. New Caps

About

Marta is delighted to present New Caps, an exhibition of twelve signature Bottle Cap paintings by Los Angeles-based multi-disciplinary artist Ben Sanders. Identical in exaggerated size, each 33.0 × 33.0 × 6.0 inches, these richly-enameled, carefully-shaped steel works represent the most recent incarnation of Sanders’ Cap series: a near decade-long exploration of this patently industrial and quotidian form and its varied [often imagined] colloquial adornments.

Initially drawing on pictorial references ranging from the barn hexes of the Pennsylvania Dutch to commercial marks for Chinese hard candy, motorized tools, and Taiwanese apple soda, this collection of Bottle Caps continues its iconographic journey through this current, hyper-stylized period of human history and into the riot of forms and colors that represent our continued evolution within and beyond the Anthropocene. Recognizable but reduced biological figures, such as flowers bursting forth among glossy leaves [Siren (Tutti Frutti), 2023], pair alongside kaleidoscopic patterns of shapes akin to hybrid playing card suits, all landing somewhere between spades, hearts, clubs, diamonds [Star (Cola), 2023]. Culinarily-inclined celestial bodies move across metal canvases as a crescent of fiery sun is eclipsed by evening’s steward [Moon (Sangria), 2023] while, nearby, a tilted purple ovoid, shining and levitating above its own shadow [Floater (Grape), 2023], echoes the bedrock of science fiction—the apparition of an unidentifiable object, paused in its journey through the dimensions.

There is both keen joy and intrigue in the images that populate the post-human landscape of which Sanders is so fond, and his electric palette brightens our consideration of this most solastalgic moment, which asks—rightly so—for our constant energy and attention. The blossoming form of brain-like matter, both cerebral and atomic, encapsulates this reflection, recalling either growth or embodied destruction—possibly the tragic conflation of the two. In their display across the faces of enlarged bottle caps, Sanders’ paintings remind us that experience is infinitely scaleable; that the perennial beauty and anxiety of the age is ours to amplify or diminish, pocket or recycle.