Felix Benton was raised by artist parents in contrasting landscapes: the arid expanses of the West Texas Chihuahuan Desert and the jagged peaks and alpine terraces of Hasliberg, Switzerland. Educated at RISD in painting, these disparate environments feel akin to the layered architectural lines that structure Felix’s canvases. With his gestural forms the paintings hold space for volatility and clarity, texture and fluidity, and abstraction and narrative that emerge when you look close enough.

Having spent two years at Ballroom Marfa as a curatorial fellow following his undergraduate studies, we found Felix packing up his Marfa studio to decamp for life in NYC. With an upcoming solo show at Nine opening September 4th in NYC, presented through Service’s residency and exhibition program Felix is already finding his way. We spoke with him about his work and how the landscapes of his youth have shaped his painting practice.

JEFF: You grew up in Marfa, Providence and Switzerland correct? How did these differing environments shape your childhood and how do they shape your artistic practice now?

FB: I lived in Marfa until I was 13 and then moved to Hasliberg, Switzerland for four years and then Providence for undergrad. Strangely Marfa and Hasliberg have almost the exact same population roughly 1,500 people and a small town way of interacting with the world is definitely something that impacts how I do everything. I would say it looks like a slightly slower and more observational pace. Something that is very important to me is to look for longer than you want before acting, and I think I learned this from small towns. In terms of a more visual impact I can’t seem to let go of the beauty of the West Texas landscape–its plants and the quality of the light and the dryness continue to directly influence the paintings I’m making.

JEFF: You’re currently packing up your Marfa studio to move to NYC. Do you make different kinds of paintings when you’re surrounded by a city as opposed to the wide open spaces of West Texas?

FB: Not really. The city has given me a new level of clarity on the work I’m making. I think because of its density I have felt compelled to really simplify and remove unnecessary parts of the paintings but the core interests of my work haven’t shifted. The city compresses things while Marfa stretches them and I feel myself moving between those two ways of seeing and making.

JEFF: Your paintings are primarily abstract in nature, line form and color as a departure point. How do you begin a painting? What decision do you make first—color or form? Or is it a constantly changing process?

FB: It’s constantly changing. The start for me is really about getting rid of the white canvas more than anything. I sometimes start with washes of color or by painting plants from the Marfa landscape. I find that it doesn’t matter so much how the paintings start as they evolve and respond to themselves often for a long time. I like to keep the beginnings simple and grounded in something real, a small moment of seeing that I’ve held onto or a plant like a cow tongue prickly pear. There are a few plants that come back into my work again and again often at the start of the painting—the prickly pear, yucca, and cholla especially.

JEFF: Why have you chosen paint + canvas as your primary material of choice at this moment?

FB: In a time where so many images are screaming for attention, painting feels solid to me. It’s the original screen in some ways and it keeps me in that grounded feeling. It’s deeply connected to the hand. It’s a physical object. It contains all the evidence of its making and it demands to be seen in person. All of these reasons feel important to me right now. Painting is also limited in what it can do and I enjoy that. It’s such a simple object just a rectangle on a wall. Painting slows looking down in a way that feels opposite to how images move now.

JEFF: Your layered compositions have a sense of dimensional space within them rather than an objecthood, almost as if they are maps of secret bunkers. Do you think about architecture or rather a more psychological space when making a painting?

FB: Between the two it would be more of a psychological space though I absolutely love composition that feels architectural in nature but determining the end of a painting is more of a psychological moment. A lot of painters describe an ending as when the painting starts to work outside of them or almost beside itself. That’s when I know it’s close to being done and it’s one of the great magics of painting that I can make something that surprises me even though technically I made it.

JEFF: Do you have any writers or quotes that provide a jumping off point for your work in the studio to share? Or music if that’s more relevant to your process?

FB: I listen to a lot of things in the studio so music is always around and seeping in somehow but I recently wrote down a set of notes to myself on how to make a painting and these have been very helpful. They led me to Richard Diebenkorn’s Notes to Myself which are lovely and eerily similar to the list I made. I am constantly writing down little quotes or small ideas in the studio. For me, making things is deeply inward but in a way similar to a black hole. I want to steal from a lot of things but I don’t know how those things will come out on the other side, so I’m constantly taking things to a point where I feel totally contaminated with images and words.

Notes to myself on beginning a painting by Richard Diebenkorn

• Attempt what is not certain. Certainty may or may not come later. It may then be a valuable delusion.

• The pretty, initial position which falls short of completeness is not to be valued - except as a stimulus for further moves.

• Do search. But in order to find other than what is searched for.

• Use and respond to the initial fresh qualities of the paint but consider them absolutely expendable.

• Don’t “discover” a subject - of any kind.

• Somehow don’t be bored but if you must, use it in action. Use its destructive potential.

• Mistakes can’t be erased but they move you forward from your present position.

• Keep thinking about Polyanna.

• Tolerate chaos.

• Be careful only in a perverse way.

Felix Benton (b. 2000, El Paso, TX) is a painter working between Marfa, Texas, and Brooklyn, New York. He received a BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2023, with a concentration in Nature, Culture, and Sustainability Studies. Benton has had a solo presentation at Do Right Hall in Marfa, Texas, and participated in group exhibitions throughout Texas, New York, and Rhode Island. He has worked as a studio assistant for Charline von Heyl, Magalie Guérin, and Duane Slick, and served as an assistant curator at Ballroom Marfa.

Upcoming Exhibitions:

“Felix Benton: What Grows Sideways”, presented by Site Service at Nine, Opening September 4, 2026

On view through September 22 112 Madison St, New York, NY 10002

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Victoria Bartlett, a creative powerhouse known for her innovations in the fashion world, first as Fashion Director for Interview Magazine in the 90’s and later as designer for her collection VPL, transformed the landscape of fashion by reimagining the geography of the female body. With her embrace of undergarments as outer garments and introduction of athleisure as a fashion-forward, intellectual and desirable pursuit (long before the Kardashians were slithering out of SUVs with spandex-ed buttocks) she was dubbed “an architect of anatomy”.

So it should come as no surprise that now Bartlett has turned her ingenuity to reshaping how we move, bend, sit and think in the environments we live and breath and the accouterments therein; positing furniture as the newest transformative regalia for the human body, upholstery for these times.

Bartlett’s design partner is the soft-spoken architect Zachary Joslow who originally hails from Lexington, MA. While the presiding interests of Bartlett’s endeavors whatever the material form they take, is the body— it’s shape and color, it’s comforts and distress, it’s emotional, economic and social selves—Joslow’s preoccupations are in cantleers and cladding, weight and elevation, the magnitude of push and pull, materiality and scale. Together, they create a compelling vision.

The creative partners temper one another—both process driven they meet in their shared purpose—giving birth to art designed for connecting. Analog berths for an increasingly immaterial world, these works anticipate our need for conversation and collaboration. Save us from the robots! In the now times when life jackets won’t suffice, Bartlett & Joslow have repurposed the reassuring shape for our greater good. As their chaise invites us to consider, let’s take a seat & be together.

We visited with Victoria and Zac in their studio at the Chocolate Factory building in Bed-Stuy. The duo has commandeered the building’s rooftop gym as their workshop. They sand, paint and reconfigure wires amongst the barbells and treadmills with a view of Manhattan.

JEFF: What mediums do you work with?

UR: We have a mixed medium practice, reclaimed materials married with high-end technology.

JEFF: What are the words, themes or subjects you’re thinking about when embarking upon a new work?

UR: It’s the reimagining of the ordinary, by taking objects from daily life and shifting their roles, altering their scale and context to create new possibilities, no longer bound to their initial purpose.

JEFF: Do you work in series?

UR: It’s more of a family unit that has a dialogue resonating between them, but they all have a common thread that binds them as a unified entity.

UR: It’s not a practice of a singular medium; it’s a collection of many layers of materials, textures, qualities and forms that speak to us.

JEFF: What are you currently excited about working on right now in the studio?

UR: We’re working on this bench that is formed by the steaming and bending of the wood. It is the manipulation of the material that creates these unique forms we wanted, and the challenge is inspiring. 

JEFF: When you are in your flow working on a piece how does it make you feel?

UR: Its like a 3-course meal, you take time to mull over it and digest, and you feel fulfilled by the thrill of almost tasting it.

JEFF: What are you doing when you are not making art?

UR: I’m collaborating with other artists on their projects or seeking out inspiration by traveling, and spending part of the year in Athens, where my appetite for finding the unknown is big. My little Greek secret is the gypsy market, which is my inspirational fix. Zac is a licensed architect practicing in NYC who is inspired by exploring and photographing nature along with rock and ice climbing. 

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