Unquiet
Things

What happens when you take the aesthetic of stumbling upon mysterious photographs in dust-thick, cobwebbed abandoned attics, combine it with the somewhat eccentric but actually quite sensible wisdom of consulting Magic 8-Balls for creative guidance, and add a stuffed companion who contributes the shadowy elements to this artistic collaboration? You enter the bewitchingly strange artistic universe of Benz and Chang, where watercolor and walnut ink conspire to create “fake vintage photos” that feel like they’ve been haunting antique shop frames since 1923, patiently waiting for someone to discover their secrets.

Each painting operates as a visual puzzle that reveals its supernatural elements only after prolonged viewing – the ghost limbs, the doubled reflections, the figures caught perpetually between looking forward and glancing back over their shoulders like they’re trying to keep track of all their simultaneous lives.

Benz creates work that captures the particular brand of sustained strangeness we all live through at some point – those changes that feel permanent but stubbornly resist normalcy, like psychological double exposures where past and present occupy the same frame. His paintings emerge from a practice that balances intuitive channeling with deliberate misdirection, where seeing something that belongs in a painting means adding it, consequences be damned.

Sometimes the collective unconscious speaks in riddles, and sometimes it speaks through an oracular toy suggesting you add more mysterious doubling to your Gothic tableau, or perhaps another ghost limb hovering at the edge of the frame. This is an artist who listens to both voices with equal attention, creating paintings that feel less like artistic inventions and more like recovered documents from a parallel timeline where the supernatural seeps with subtle mystery into everyday life – proof that make-believe, when rendered with care and conviction, transforms into its own kind of truth.

Unquiet Things: Your partnership with Chang – a stuffed cat who “supplies the dark”- feels like its own kind of evocative narrative. How has this fictional collaboration influenced your approach to duality in your work, particularly in exploring the boundaries between real and imagined?

Benz and Chang: When I started the Benz and Chang paintings, I wanted to make fake vintage photographs. Just like as if you were in an antique shop or the attic of an abandoned house and stumbled across a beautiful and haunting photo in a frame. I wanted to make paintings like that, and this is why I use actual vintage frames from antique shops to frame my work. I decided that, in order to paint make-believe vintage photos, it would help to have a make-believe photography studio partner. I say Mr. Chang supplies the dark because it’s absurd and also maybe true. He has the ability to traverse between the earthly realm and the underworld.

Your work explores deeply personal moments of transformation – fear, grief, mystical encounters, mortality. What draws you to express these profound human transitions through the language of shadow and reverie, the supernatural and surreal? How does the ghostly aesthetic of early 20th-century photography help you capture these moments of the liminal and the ethereal?

I work intuitively, and if I can get anywhere near the collective subconscious, I feel like I’m succeeding. I’m also usually working something out from my own life. To tap into the collective subconscious, I prefer using make-believe, nonsense, and pretend. I think Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland makes a good example of this. We can all relate to falling down a rabbit hole these days.

Or, on a deep emotional level, we can all relate to being too big and too small. I think one of the enduring qualities of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a portrayal of the universal human experience, abstracted by a thick layer of nonsense, make-believe, and pretend. I think that using early 20th Century imagery adds a level of obscurity in that is Other. It’s another time, another place, a culture we like to think we understand, but which is still very foreign. It naturally occults and mythologizes. I also just like old things. I like old things just because they’re old.

The use of a Magic 8-Ball as an artistic oracle is intriguing. Could you elaborate on how this method of inviting chance into your creative process began? In what ways does this approach of randomness and uncertainty shape the dreamlike qualities that permeate your work.

I started working with the Magic 8-Ball and also coin tosses because I had problems making decisions. It was a tool to help prevent me from getting stuck. Now, I think it contributes to the dreamlike quality of the work by helping me restrain the overwhelming presence of my will. I am constantly fighting my own impulses to Make Sense.

Your paintings reveal different layers of meaning through multiple viewings – what begins with the feeling of peeking at a vintage photograph unfolds to glimmers of strangeness and hushed giggles of a dream-logic absurdity. It gives a sense of impossible deja vu, a feeling of ineffable familiarity juxtaposed with a sort of inevitable unreality, veiled with fanciful melancholy.  How intentional is this process of revelation? What interests you about creating works that demand multiple viewings to fully appreciate their complexity?

First off, thank you for being so kind. I feel like you really get the work, and I appreciate that. While I work, my brain does this annoying thing where it’s always racing ahead to build meaning. I’m always intentionally misdirecting and subverting. I like it best if I only have a tenuous hold on what a painting means to me, and very often I’m only chasing a feeling. Most people see my paintings in their very own way, and that’s the way I like it.

Your recent “Changeling” exhibition at Haven Gallery marks an intriguing evolution in your work – especially in your shift from sepia tones to more vivid color. In the show statement, you speak of living multiple lives, both consecutive and simultaneous ones. How did this exploration of multiplicity influence your move toward a more surreal, colorful palette?

I keep being asked about the multiple lives statement, and looking back maybe I should have phrased it differently. I do believe in reincarnation in the Samsara sense, as opposed to the more pop culture speculative sense. But really, I was talking about multiple lives more in the sense of simultaneous lives. When most people talk about leading “multiple lives”, it can get dark. People hiding infidelity, drug use, being sociopaths at work, etc. But in a more normal sense, we all live multiple lives. For me, simultaneously, I am a vaguely successful artist and also a very specific flavor of software architect. I aspire to live a “normal” life, and I am from a different planet. So there is an artist and a technology worker who specializes in creating and maintaining order. There is a person who actually just wants to appear normal in the world, and someone from a different planet.

When I was a little kid, I didn’t look anything like my parents or brother, and people would ask where my copper hair came from. One of my mother’s answers was that they found me in New Mexico, living with a family of rabbits under some bushes. So even in my family mythology, I came from somewhere else. The show title “Changeling” referred to the folk tale sense of a fairy child who has been substituted into a mortal family.

Your “Maybe Not the Norm” exhibition at Riversea Gallery presented such compelling visions of psychological doubling – those conjoined figures on the velvet fainting couch, the figure simultaneously peering around a corner while looking back over their shoulder. How do these moments of divided attention speak to your exploration of permanent change? What drew you to express this contemporary state through these particular Gothic motifs?

More double lives. Double consciousnesses. Making friends with your other lives. There is also a piece in there about reincarnations of Cleopatra, which is one of my favorite things to meditate on, after Mehitabel the cat (from Don Marquis “Archy and Mehitabel”).

Your artist statement mentions early experiences with spirits and hauntings. How has your relationship with supernatural themes evolved alongside your artistic practice?

I’m not sure if I have anything resembling a satisfying answer for this. It’s something I experience, and it’s a part of the way I move through the world. If anything, it’s all only become more mysterious and elusive, instead of making any kind of sense.

Ghost stories seem to transcend cultural boundaries, appearing in narratives worldwide. How does this shared language of the supernatural influence your approach to connecting with viewers? What universal human experiences do you seek to tap into through these spectral imagery?

Ghost stories fascinate us. They are about the persistence of memory. They are a cultural manifestation of our ultimate existential questions. They are a meditation on the relationships between the body, soul, memory, and personality. They haunt, they guide, they instruct, they deliver messages. They are mystery.

Your studio must be such an intriguing space, given the dreamlike nature of your work. What objects, images, or elements surround you while you’re creating? How does your environment influence these haunting images you create?

I have been collecting vintage photos for decades. Mostly I have photos from the early 20th century, but also some from the 1800s. Most of my collection is of people in costumes, photos of mediums, fake ghost photos, and a small collection of silent film celebrities. I particularly collect people in bat and cat costumes.

Also have a really tiny collection of art from various artists. List of artists in the photos:

Jana Seven @rag.and.bone.dolls

Sara Swink @sara.swink.ceramics

Alicia Justus @theamazingjustus

Mister Finch @misterfinchtextiles

Beyond the supernatural elements in your work, what moments or observations in daily life catch your artistic eye?

Old things. I like old things just because they’re old. I like the interiors of old buildings. I like trees and animals (especially cats). I like books to read and also as art objects.

Find Benz and Chang: Website // Instagram