bent/haus: Ben K. Foley + Allison Tanenhaus

Exhibition Dates: Friday, January 7, 2022 - Sunday, February 20, 2022
Gallery Hours: Fridays - Sundays, 12pm-6pm (masks are required and available if needed)

Boston Cyberarts is pleased to present bent/haus (Ben K. Foley + Allison Tanenhaus) in their first dedicated show as a duo.

bent/haus create mind-bending optical illusions, harnessing light, color, sound, video, and data into imaginative and immersive 3D experiences. Whether bouncing off mirrors or suspended in mist, bent/haus’s curious installations invite viewers to challenge their perception of both inner and outer spaces.

Using smartphone apps and AI, Allison crafts psychedelic glitch art rich in abstraction, vibrancy, and unexpected dimensional qualities. Ben’s visionary, custom-built vessels—fashioned from simple yet cleverly recycled materials, and utilizing rudimentary tricks of physics—beam the 2D files into life.

For their exhibition at Boston Cyberarts, Ben and Allison will reboot fan favorites like their hypnotic infinity box “Glitchfield,” plus premiere all-new pieces—from cable access–inspired music videos to upcycled trompe l'oeil sculptures—imbued with their signature electro-organic experimentation.

You can learn more about bent/haus by visiting their website: https://benthaus.art/

about the artists

Ben K. Foley (he/him) creates real-life 3D optical illusions designed to consume the viewer's visual perception, and acting upon curiosity is the key to his process and practice. What he offers to those who engage with his work are new visual tools, previously unknown to them but part of their very nature. He wields found, recycled, and repurposed industrial materials, along with electronics, to focus his primary medium: light. He describes the patterns in his personal experiences of discovery and pseudo-scientific exploration by creating interactive and kinetic installations and sculptures. His practice involves hypothesis, experimentation, natural observation, and an alchemical twist to the scientific method to find the very line that spans the definitions of what we see as art, what we understand through science, and what we find mysterious through mysticism. Memory, mindfulness, exploring the unconscious through dreams, mythology, and aspects of Zen define his interests, where he seeks to find commonalities between the microcosmic and the macrocosmic. Ben brings forth work that seeks to highlight ethereal and fleeting moments of physical reaction that we seldom see – yet surround us every day. 

Allison Tanenhaus (she/her) is a New York–born, Boston–based digital glitch artist. She specializes in bold geometrics, kaleidoscopic color fields, trippy op art, thought-provoking truisms, anachronistic tech mashups, and unexpected dimensional qualities. Her primary formats include retrofuturistic GIFs, loops, and music videos; abstract public art; street art cat stickers; and large-scale video projections. Source material consists of Allison’s original images, collected artifacts, and crowdsourced clips that she alters via smartphone (and occasionally AI). Made with equal parts deliberation and experimentation, the results are rainbow-hued compositions that take on a psychedelic life of their own. At a time when platforms pervasively cull personal data, she views creatively reclaiming files and devices as a radical act of autonomy, mindfulness, and personal ownership. Also looks way cool. Allison’s work has been showcased in 16 countries via galleries, public art, media festivals, and guerrilla street art postings. Notable commissions and exhibitions include the ICA Store at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, SaveArtSpace, “GlitchKraft: Allison Tanenhaus + Friends,” and “Empowered Women Empower Women,” curated by Paris Hilton. Allison is a grantee of the 2019 Somerville Visual Art Fellowship and the 2021 City of Boston Transformative Public Art Program. She is a member of electronic music group The Square Root of Negative Two and optical installation duo bent/haus, and was honored on 2021’s Alternative Power 100 Music List by shesaid.so and Patreon.

below images are all photos taken in Boston Cyberarts Gallery by the artists Ben K. Foley and Allison Tanenhaus