Gallery Diet is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new work by Benny Merris. The exhibition is a continuation of Merris’ performative photographs begun in 2012 while on residence at the Banff Centre. This is Merris’ first exhibition in Miami, the show will be accompanied by a large scale outdoor wall painting.

Benny Merris is painting in the noosphere. If you’re wondering just what the noosphere is, it’s defined as that part of the biosphere that is affected by human thought, activity, culture, and knowledge. Nature and culture not only intersect here, they move together symbiotically. Merris imbues his artwork with similar energy. His references are visual as well as process- oriented, and his paintings, prints, and drawings manifest these interests in the way he considers color, light, and materiality in his work. During a residency at the Banff Centre in 2012, Merris produced a pivotal series of works in which he photographed his painted forearm reaching into dramatic landscapes where he recorded sensual and mimetic scenarios: the images approach abstraction as a way to engage with and make sense of the world. Merris’ sensibility is as organic and fluid as it is rigorous, as filled with wonder as it is informed by a sense of scientific reason, and it consistently navigates between such positions, seeing them not as oppositional, but naturally and intimately connected. (excerpts from an unpublished essay, Dean Daderko, 2014) This will be Merris’ first solo exhibition at Gallery Diet. Other solo exhibitions include Jeff Bailey Gallery, NY; Kunsthal, Rotterdam; ltd, Los Angeles; Cokkie Snoei, Rotterdam; Societé, Berlin; and The Project Room, Glasgow. Merris received a BA from the University of Massachusetts, Boston in 2002 and an MFA from the Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow, Scotland in 2007. Merris lives and works in Brooklyn.