My sister took a photo of me about five years ago on a dock at the far edge of Lake Interlocken in Switzerland. I stand before this vast expanse of gray nothingness. The horizon is subtly defined between two shades of gray; a perfect, undisturbed illusion between a vast body of water and misty atmosphere produces a delineation between heaven and earth. So many moments and environments provide unexpected moments where simplicity and serenity define a beautiful and blissful moment. Not unlike the effect captured in this photo, Jani Benjamins has focused on trying to capture moments between landscape, abstraction, and illusion in his work.

Looking through Benjamins’ body of work various predecessors in the history of abstractionist painting come forward and recede to the background as a sort of unconscious sampling and a conscious methodology. Philip Guston changed his focus away from fields and washes; later paintings pulled away from the abstract expressionist school towards exploring and reinvestigating the role of the line. Benjamins took many routes in his investigation of abstraction before arriving at his current investigations of abstraction, color, and line in both painting and sculpture.

Past series in photography included studies of the sublime in nature by focusing on easily overlooked characteristics of environments, and they remain on the border between meditative peace, the sublime, and penetration. Pungere, horizon, 2005 (visible on the main page of Benjamins’ website www.janibenjamins.com) is a mysterious image he either created or captured of a horizon line between two varying hues of blue. His previous use of the tools in a traditional landscape form reference linear horizontal elements and a defining flat horizon line. This new series of work moves beyond unifying line and color-forms as traditional horizontal planes. He achieves this by playing with multi-dimensional perspective on two-dimensional surfaces and in three-dimensional reliefs.

Benjamins’ recent Untitled studies from 2006 incorporate a variety of materials and techniques in order to investigate form and color through multi-dimensional surfaces. He has a difficult task in trying to create and define work with a sense of completion. This is further complicated because all of these works remain untitled, leaving the viewer to their own devices in reading his work. His method develops tools between the sketchbook, larger paintings, and relief sculptures for expanding color, surface, and texture into three dimensions.

His initial series of experimental studies juxtaposed dozens of standard 8.5” x 11” notebooks full of combinations of collage and acrylic colors. He arranged a collection of successful pages upon his studio wall to create a contemplative surface. Composed of organic, painterly abstraction working in tandem with hard-edge, geometric forms, Benjamins used these studies for larger paintings that explore the potential beyond the boundaries of the 8”x11” surface. The relief works mirror the paintings in their investigation of the relationship between geometric and painterly abstraction. Yet, they also complicate these studies with the addition of a sculptural property, which allows the viewer to perceive the work from a variety of perspectives. The reliefs dismiss the necessity of a horizon line; instead, they allow juxtaposing colors of jutting spaces to further complicate abstracted spaces. His sculptures incorporate everyday found objects in the environment such as ephemerally short-lived branches and leaves and sturdier man-made plastics from construction sites. By incorporating this broad range of environmental debris, Benjamins highlights the potential of the developed environment to retain a sense of sublime landscape abstraction. But, at the same time, he subtly underlines the intrusion of mankind.

These objects don’t ask for much more than a sense of place and a moment of contemplation. There are so many places in the world where one can go to experience a transcendent environment. I found the sublime the first time I drove out through the vast expanses of undeveloped spaces in west Texas. Live in one place long enough and one forgets how different the world looks through fresh eyes discovering a new environment. There are plenty of places and space to investigate the sublime; and, as for Benjamins’ work, it is a matter of translating experience into a product of the studio.