Plane Space is delighted to present a solo exhibition of new sculptures by Ben Butler. This exhibition will mark not only Butler’s third show at the gallery, but Plane Space’s fiftieth and second to last exhibition as well – the gallery will close its doors on December 21. The exhibition will be on view from October 18th through November 16th with a reception for the artist on Saturday evening, October 18th, from 6 to 8 p.m.

Comprised of three new sculptures and augmented by a series of drawings, Butler continues to explore both geometric and organic forms in wood. Two of the sculptures, in pine, are cut from the same pieces of wood, one offering a convexity and the other a concavity of forms that suggest two parts of a whole. The undulating grooves, achieved through repetitive imperfect cuts with a jigsaw, connote the rippled ridges formed on the floor of a seabed. The third piece, a larger work consisting of hundreds of faceted, tapered poplar sticks, is almost tree-like in its outward growth across the floor of the gallery. In the ways that Butler’s sculptures are modular in their execution, the drawings – a mix of graphite, ink and gouache – are similarly systematic in their method, but result in being equally organic in appearance.

A graduate of the M.F.A. sculpture program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Butler has exhibited extensively in the Chicago and New York areas as well as a recent shows in Seattle and Maine. He has recently been hired as an Assistant Professor of art at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. He received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant in 2006 and has held residencies at the Bemis Center, Norton Island, Art Omi, The MacDowell Colony, Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, The Vermont Studio Center and The Ucross Foundation.