Originally from Boise, Idaho, Benny Merris is a recent graduate from the Master’s program at the Glasgow School of Art. His artistic practice has been a steady succession of enthusiastic experimentation, circuitous exploration and progressive refinement. He builds an agile, raucous and flexible methodology across drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture and performance. The conceptual and aesthetic diversity within his work is informed by an intellectual and visual curiosity, environmental responsiveness and a joyous engagement with the world. Merris is thoroughly dedicated to abstraction, treating it as the precious domain of infinite perceptual possibility and plausibility. In his works, accidents collide with precision in constant search of surprising poetic and spatial harmony.Maximal and Minimal compulsions ram together emanating bizarre and beautiful schrapnel.
Merris has recently exhibited with Cokkie Snoei in Rotterdam (solo), SWG3 in Glasgow, A.Vermin in association with Glasgow International and has an upcoming solo exhibition at DanielHansMax in Berlin. In 2007, he was the recipient of a Glasgow Sculpture Studios Graduate Award and the Royal Scottish Academy DCAPrize for Painting.