INFORMATION FOR
The work of 17 artists who have been mentored or influenced by the American artist Ben Jones are on view in the exhibition Constellations at the William Paterson University Galleries in the Ben Shahn Center for the Visual Arts from October 16 through December 8, 2023. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and select Saturdays (November 18) from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Admission is free.
Participating artists Josephine Barreiro, Gianluca Bianchino, Gerardo Castro, and Mansa K. Mussa will take part in a panel discussion on Wednesday, October 25 from 4 to 5 p.m. in the South Gallery, followed by an opening reception for the exhibition from 5 to 6 p.m.
Constellations features works by Ray Arcadio, Josephine Barreiro, Gianluca Bianchino, Gerardo Castro, José Manuel Cruz, Orlando Cuevas, Gerald Glover, Troy Jones, Heejung Kim, Mansa K. Mussa, Mustart, Orocoro, Jose Pardo, Michele A. Pope, Lucy Rovetto, Danielle Scott, and Bisa Washington. Their community of practice—working in parallel universes of their own creation—extends four decades and thousands of miles beyond Jones’s northern New Jersey orbit.
Artists were invited to submit work that reflects Jones’s influence. They were also prompted to describe how Jones inspired their subject matter, symbols, and materials; their own instructional pedagogy; their personal or artistic trajectory; and their philosophy on life. Together, these works and words create a record of artistic lineage. A fully illustrated exhibition brochure featuring artist’s essays that also unfolds to a poster will be available to visitors for no charge.
This exhibition complements The Universe of Ben Jones, a collaboration between William Paterson University and New Jersey City University celebrating the Jones, who is a 1963 graduate of William Paterson and a New Jersey City University professor emeritus. This Mellon Foundation–funded collaboration is centered around the Jones’s retrospective exhibition concurrently on view at the William Paterson University Galleries. Both exhibitions will travel to New Jersey City University Galleries, where they will be on view from January 27 to April 3, 2024.
Gianluca Bianchino is a multimedia artist, curator, and arts educator living and working in northern New Jersey. Inspired by physics and architecture, his work is focused on immersive installations and interactive sculptures that often engage with optics and technology. Mechanical Landscape in Broken Violet (2022) represents a set of wall sculptures dealing with surface tension in both two- and three-dimensional forms. He recently reflected that “the experimental quality of my art practice has its roots in the teachings and encouragement of Ben Jones, who, during the late 1990s and early 2000s always supported my tendency to expand my artistic vocabulary through fearless exercises that began in two dimensions and extended into the three-dimensional maze of possibilities.”
Gerardo Castro obtained his BFA from Jersey City State College (NJCU) in 1994 and his MFA from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY in 1997. He encountered Jones as a student at NJCU, and observed that “perhaps it is the re-connecting to my roots, the blending of the spirit and physical worlds, ritual, and transformation that ultimately will define my art, and that philosophy resulted from Ben Jones’s influence on all the roads I’ve walked in my career.” As a contemporary Afro-Puerto Rican artist, Castro strives in his work to illustrate the multiplicity of the Afro-Caribbean experience by addressing issues of colonization, queer history, ritual performance cultures, and gender. He creates constellations of elaborate, glittery, unmistakably Black and emphatically brown figures in environments that are steeped in magic and the spiritual, as exemplified in Proudest Blue Boy (2022).
Michele A. Pope’s oil, acrylic, and paint stick on canvas painting Sarama’s Pups (2022) hints at the Hindu goddess and acknowledges the mythology and symbolism surrounding the dog. A ubiquitous symbol that has appeared in different traditions over thousands of years, Pope explained that the dog connects us to our past just as readily as her work now connects her to the foundational work she did with Ben Jones. The dogs help direct and connect the traveling soul with Sarama, the goddess who will ultimately help with the transportation of the soul’s journey to another incarnation or place in time. The Vendidad says that enroute to heaven the soul will meet the goddess with her dogs. The chosen colors, while intuitive, can also be an indication of a place that is otherworldly since they do not reflect what naturally exists. She added that as a student at NJCU, it was “natural to learn from and trust someone who is so impassioned about a subject, someone who wants to impart knowledge—a secret, in a sense. For me, this secret was that of light—that is, color. In the Vedic texts, the Sanskrit word for ‘guru’ means dispeller of darkness. Therefore, I think it’s safe to say that we can elevate Ben Jones to guru of color, or maybe he’s like Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, the ‘dog star,’ helping those under his guidance to navigate.”
Artists also reflected that in addition to a stylistic or technical connection, their choice indicates the familial bond they share with Jones, or the bond formed with him over issues of social justice and transformation, equality, and activism. In You were given to the universe by a King (2023), from her current ongoing series, “Black Boy You Are the Universe, Not an Unwanted Weed,” New Jersey-based artist Danielle Scott explained that she “depicts Black boys, their beautiful, brilliant blackness laid out against the vast inky infinite black of the universe from which they are descended.” In this series, both the universe and the boys are adorned with dandelions. “I want both of my boys to remember all the wishes that they made blowing their innocent and hopeful breath against dandelions and all the times that they gave me these beautiful, magical yellow ‘weeds’ saying, “I have a gift for you, Momma. Please make a wish.’ Both these ‘weeds’ and these boys are often misinterpreted as nuisances that need to be plucked. Yet, my wish for them is always the same, a long lifetime of wishes that continuously come true for them.”
The Universe of Ben Jones, concurrently on view in the South Gallery and East Gallery from September 5 – December 8, 2023, presents six decades of creative expression by the artist Ben Jones. Many of the works—bold, insightful, and in a visual language all his own—have rarely been exhibited or are on display here for the first time. His symbology has transcended global and local issues of ecology, technology, politics, and spirituality, making him the conscience of his generation and of today.
This exhibition is supported in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. The William Paterson University Galleries are wheelchair-accessible. Large-print educational materials are available. For additional information, please call the William Paterson University Galleries at 973-720-2654.
