Bennie Flores Ansell: Particle and A Wave

Bennie Flores Ansell opens Particle and A Wave at FLATS on October 8, with the exhibition running through January 23. The reception is that first night, October 8, from 6 PM to 9 PM.

The show starts with a physical fact: light is both a particle and a wave. Ansell takes that duality as both her subject and her medium. She photographs light projected and shaped by dichroic acrylic, mirrors, theatre gels, film, and glass, returning to the root definition of photography as drawing with light. The images are the result of how those materials bend and filter the light before it ever hits the camera.

Within the exhibition, The Test Pattern Prints draw from a nearly obsolete television test pattern—that image of suspended transmission that most of us only remember from the edges of a broadcast. It took on new meaning for her during the pause of COVID, which is when she began the pieces. The colors of those light projections started as a conversation with Mark Rothko; she first carried his palettes with her on her first trip to Europe, when she stood before his Seagram Murals at the Tate. She's described Rothko's paintings as places where two sadnesses can meet, and her photographed-light projections are an attempt to build a similar meeting place.

If you want to catch the opening, the reception is October 8 from 6 PM to 9 PM at FLATS, 2402 Montrose Boulevard, Houston, Texas 77006. After that, the show stays up through January 23, so you've got plenty of time to swing by if you can't make the first night.