Jane Lackey + Ben Dallas

A Delicate Balance, bringing together two Santa Fe-based artists whose practices find a balance between order and chance. Through precise geometry, repeated gestures, and unexpected materials, both artists create works that reward a closer look.
Presenting pieces from her new Columns series, Jane Lackey builds abstract vertical constructions through repetition and layering.  Her works on paper, meant for observation and close comparisons, explore marks that indicate invisible forces felt in our bodies, in nature or in larger effervescent systems. Scaled in relation to the human body, these works carry the energy of their making while ultimately settling into a quiet sense of stillness.

In Ben Dallas’s work, painting becomes a starting point for exploring depth, structure, and material. In his new series Geometry Dreaming, Wanting To Be Something Else, geometric forms that first appear to be painted shapes reveal themselves as actual openings, creating a playful dialogue between illusion and reality. In his other body of work titled Behind The Scenes, Dallas brings the often-hidden structures of painting into view, pairing frayed canvas supports with carefully painted panels. The resulting pieces combine crisp geometry with tactile, irregular surfaces, and are full of small details that reveal themselves over time.
Together, Lackey and Dallas invite us to slow down and look more closely. A Delicate Balance brings attention to the layers, structures, and unexpected details that shape the way we see an artwork.