Ben Borden at NOON Projects

Ben Borden, Bloom (installation view) (2024). Image courtesy of the artist and NOON Projects. Photo: Joshua Schaedel.

Ben Borden’s show at NOON Projects hinges on a curious collaboration between nature and nurture. Borden’s paintings are alive in the literal sense: Living materials allow the work to transform in ways beyond the artist’s control. Resembling Petri dishes with their contents tightly compressed, the fifteen wall-hung paintings blossom and break in lustrous currents like an ocean eddy, while others resemble the gastrointestinal system. Tapping into a keen sense of inspection, we view the works as if through a microscope. Soon though, the microscope turns into a mirror, as we start to recognize the textures of our own lives within these images.

To create the paintings for Bloom, Borden worked with an alchemical mixture of potassium ferrocyanide, glycerin, and other chemicals suspended between layers of bioplastic and glass. The microbial contents of these paintings have been carefully compressed into arrangements that continue to move, ever so incrementally, after being framed. We view the impermanent works for only a single moment in their slow growth, a reminder that life comprises languorous processes, from the creases that develop on the skin over a lifetime to the way that large land masses are formed and reformed, plates shifting and fissuring in ways impossible to detect in real-time until the revisions are there, staring back at you as new scenery.

Each of Borden’s undulating pieces carries a six-digit designation as if classified for scientific research (the numbers correspond with the date the reactions were “set,” so some works share the same name). Some paintings, like the red iteration of 020424 (all works 2024), have the warmth and oscillation of aura photos. Here, the edges of the central terra cotta shape appear to push out in waves like a warm bruise. 102723 is reminiscent of Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam (c. 1512), with gut grey smears and curving pockets of ultramarine blue emerging from within the painting’s creases. Looking at each work feels like watching tiny segments of the Earth’s layers reveal its strange evidence, drawing us into a sense of deep time. The images unfold like slow eruptions teeming with unpredictable energy, but within this dynamism is a palpable order.

The way the images form and change reminds us of our internal systems, slowly constricting and contracting and churning away, hidden from view by the sheath of our skin. The pair of blocky, jagged forms protruding in 101623, sit like fossilized jawbones laid out for display at either side of the frame. These forms may seem stuck in time, but the living substances within the painting continue to move, causing imperceptible changes that eventually become part of the painting’s overall structure. The natural world’s simultaneous mathematical precision and messiness intermingle in the collisions of Borden’s oscillating shapes, mirroring our own capacity for these extremes. His mix of organic and inorganic materials captures the organized chaos contained within our slow-morphing ecosystems. 

Ben Borden: Bloom runs from March 22–May 5, 2024 at NOON Projects (951 Chung King Rd., Los Angeles, CA 90012).

Ben Borden, 102723 (2024). Active chemical reaction suspended in bio-polymer, steel, acid etch glass, and powder-coated aluminum artist frame, 58.5 x 48 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and NOON Projects. Photo: Joshua Schaedel.

Ben Borden, 102723 (detail) (2024). Active chemical reaction suspended in bio-polymer, steel, acid etch glass, and powder-coated aluminum artist frame, 58.5 x 48 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and NOON Projects. Photo: Joshua Schaedel.

Ben Borden, 101623 (2024). Active chemical reaction suspended in bio-polymer, steel, acid etch glass, and powder-coated aluminum artist frame, 58.5 x 48 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and NOON Projects. Photo: Joshua Schaedel.

Ben Borden, 032223 (2024). Active chemical reaction suspended in bio-polymer, steel, acid etch glass, and powder-coated aluminum artist frame, 58.5 x 48 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and NOON Projects. Photo: Joshua Schaedel.

Ben Borden, 032223 (detail) (2024). Active chemical reaction suspended in bio-polymer, steel, acid etch glass, and powder-coated aluminum artist frame, 58.5 x 48 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and NOON Projects. Photo: Joshua Schaedel.

Ben Borden, 030824 (2024). Active chemical reaction suspended in bio-polymer, steel, and machined acrylic, 23.25 x 16.25 x 1.25 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and NOON Projects. Photo: Joshua Schaedel.

Ben Borden, 020424 (2024). Active chemical reaction suspended in bio-polymer, steel, and machined acrylic, 23.25 x 16.25 x 1.25 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and NOON Projects. Photo: Joshua Schaedel.

Ben Borden, 012024 (2024). Active chemical reaction suspended in bio-polymer, steel, and machined acrylic, 23.25 x 16.25 x 1.25 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and NOON Projects. Photo: Joshua Schaedel.

Thomas J. Stanton received a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Southern California. His writing can be found in various places. He lives in Los Angeles.

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