ARTIST RECEPTION JUNE 6 (5-8PM)

This series of mixed-media collages by Gavin Benjamin is rooted in observation — in the art of people watching and the fleeting theater of public life. The works explore the tension between visibility and anonymity, individuality and performance, memory and mythmaking. The 1990s now feel like the threshold between two worlds: the final moment before technology fundamentally altered our relationship to privacy, identity, and self-expression. Before the omnipresence of cell phones, cameras, and social media, there existed a rare freedom — the ability to move through the world unrecorded, to invent oneself continuously and without scrutiny.

Blending autobiography with pop culture, nightlife, politics, and collective memory, these works preserve fragments of a disappearing New York City. They are layered portraits of a city, a generation, and a state of mind that can never fully exist again.