Located in the thoroughfare through Bakery Office One from Bakery Square Boulevard to East Liberty Boulevard, The Portal Art Gallery is a space dedicated to showcasing captivating, local artwork. The program is set to grow further, fostering ongoing collaboration with the community and showcasing an array of talented, local artists.
The exhibits are changed throughout the year and all of the art in the galleries is for sale. A portion of all proceeds will be donated to the Larimer Consensus Group.
In partnership with:
Gavin Benjamin consistently evolves his art practice exploring an assortment of themes often focused on media, fashion, politics, pop culture, design, and how we live. This exhibit showcases a selection of works from a variety of his series. While some pieces have been exhibited, many have never been seen outside of his studio.
ZYNKA Gallery is honored to work with Gavin Benjamin for almost a decade, and is proud to present his work at The Portal.
I am multifaceted artist who combines original analog photography and appropriated images with collage, paint, varnish, and crystals to create rich and luxurious works that call back to baroque traditions while incorporating elements of current culture to provoke, critique, and explore.
Mixed media collage and photography convey my experience of being a Black man in America today. I use appropriated images from fashion, pop culture, interior design, and the legacy of iconic Black portraitists and photographers to inform my practice, touching on themes of masculinity, identity, race, family, and history. Found images are collaged and varnished, embellished with Swarovski crystals to embolden my subject matter (often myself, friends and family members) to new levels of luxury, social status, and hierarchy. I seek to subvert traditional preconceived notions about Black, immigrant families (like my own) to encourage audiences to question their own assumptions about race.
I expand on this practice by working in new communities outside my own, with a focus on portraiture, to shed light on people who have been forgotten by art history. My aim is to recontextualize communities into the canon of American art, uplifting them and their stories. This practice is a celebration of the vibrancy that is often overlooked in the Rust Belt and in disenfranchised groups.