Ben Buswell
This Land
July 11 - August 30, 2025
Opening Reception:
Friday, July 11, 5-7PM
In This Land, Ben Buswell continues his exploration of how identity is shaped by place, perception, and historical context. Drawing on Fernando Pessoa’s idea that seeing one’s own reflection is both unnatural and troubling, Buswell presents a mirrored floor installation that, despite its reflective surface, refuses to show the viewer their own image. This absence becomes a powerful metaphor: rather than offering a clear sense of self, the work asks us to consider how we are formed through our environments and the systems we exist within. Alongside this, a series of photographic works transforms state data points, such as violence rates, income levels, and federal funding, into visual language through simple physical gestures. For Buswell, the self is neither entirely separate from nor wholly defined by its surroundings. Instead, he suggests identity is formed through the tension between connection and disconnection, through empathy and shared experience. In This Land, the landscape resists being a backdrop or possession. It demands we look outward as a way to understand ourselves, and invites us to reframe reflection as an opportunity to encounter something beyond the self.
About Ben Buswell:
Ben Buswell (b. 1974 in Dallas, Oregon) is an artist based in Portland, Oregon. Buswell's sculptural work spans diverse media, encompassing ceramics, metals, resins, incised photographs, and more. He subjects these materials to physical processes (such as scratching, piercing, melting, and tearing) wherein the accumulation of small, repetitive gestures builds into complex wholes.
Buswell is a Hallie Ford Fellow in the Visual Arts (2015), a three-time recipient of the Career Opportunity Grant from the Oregon Arts Commission and Ford Family Foundation (2011, 2014, and 2025), and was awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Oregon Arts Commission (2018). Notable solo exhibitions have been presented by Oregon Center for Contemporary Art, Samuel Freeman in Los Angeles; CoCA Seattle; and in Portland, Oregon at Upfor, The Art Gym at Marylhurst University, and TILT Gallery and Project Space. Notable group exhibitions include What Needs to be Said: Hallie Ford Fellows in the Visual Arts (curated by Diana Nawi), Portland2012: A Biennial of Contemporary Art presented by Disjecta Contemporary Art Center, and the final iteration of The Oregon Biennial at the Portland Art Museum. Collections that house his work include The Portland Art Museum, The Schneider Museum of Art, Portland Community College, Western Oregon University, The University of Oregon, the Collaborative Life Sciences Building at Oregon Health and Science University, and many private collections, including that of Jan and Patricia de Bont. Buswell received his MFA from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and BFA from Oregon State University.