Statement
My paintings often begin with structure. Grids, diagrams, architectural frameworks, fragments of language, and recurring symbolic forms give the painting a place to start. As work progresses, those structures are subjected to revision, interruption, and improvisation. New forms emerge, earlier decisions are obscured or reworked and relationships that were initially formal begin to suggest other associations.
Sources as varied as mythology, occult symbolism, maps, popular imagery and diagrams find their way into the paintings. I'm not interested in using these references to tell a story or illustrate an idea. Instead, I think of them as pictorial material—elements that can be organized, disrupted, repeated, or transformed through the process of painting. A symbol may become a compositional device, a diagram may begin to read as a landscape, or an improvised gesture may unexpectedly help hold a painting together.
Recent works have increasingly relied on dark grounds and saturated color. These choices grew from a desire to fit more activity into the same space without allowing any single element to take control. Black fields allow color, symbols and linear structures to behave differently than they do against lighter grounds, while repeated revisions leave traces of earlier decisions visible beneath later ones.
Forms often migrate from one painting to the next, changing function as they reappear. Certain motifs persist, but their role changes depending on the painting. A structure that organizes one work may become an obstacle in the next. The paintings develop through this continual process of reuse, revision, and transformation.
Nefertiti, 66 x 68 in, Acrylic on canvas, 2026
Head of Orpheus, 68 x 66 in, Acrylic on canvas, 2026
Reoccurring Dream, 68 x 66 in, Acrylic on canvas, 2026
Garden at Night, 68 x 66 in, Acrylic on canvas, 2026
Night of the Hunter, 68 x 66 in, Acrylic on canvas, 2026
Bio
Paul Behnke (b. Memphis, Tennessee) is an American painter whose work combines geometric structures, symbolic forms, fragments of language, and gestural mark-making. Drawing from sources that include mythology, occult symbolism, maps, diagrams, architecture, popular imagery, and the history of painting, he develops paintings in which formal structures are repeatedly revised, disrupted, and transformed through the act of painting.
Behnke has presented solo exhibitions in New York, Philadelphia, Heidelberg, Saint Augustine, Anchorage, and Memphis. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States and internationally, including exhibitions in London, Dublin, Glasgow, Honolulu, San Francisco, Paphos, France, the Netherlands, and New York. His paintings have been discussed in publications including Hyperallergic, The New Criterion, and The New Republic.
Alongside his studio practice, Behnke has maintained an active engagement with contemporary painting discourse for more than a decade. He is the founder and editor of Structure and Imagery, a long-running platform devoted to painting and visual culture, and his writing has appeared in AbCrit: A Forum for Debate on Abstract Art, Painters' Table, Gamut, and No. Magazine. From 2015 to 2017, he co-directed Stout Projects, an artist-run exhibition space in Bushwick, Brooklyn dedicated to exhibiting emerging and mid-career artists.
Behnke lives and works in Memphis, Tennessee.
Selected Exhibitions | Writings | Residencies
Selected One-Person Exhibitions
2023 My Love is Winter: Gray Paintings, International Gallery of Contemporary Art, Anchorage, AK
2017 Strange Entities, Gary Giordano Projects, Brooklyn, NY
2016 The Thing I came For, Kunstraum Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
2013 An Awful Rainbow, Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, New York, NY
2012 Like Giants, Rosenfeld Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Selected Group Exhibitions
2026 The Shadow Side of Everything, Terrace Gallery, Huddersfield & London, UK
2025 Cross Currents 2, Rosebud Contemporary & Makowski Gallery, New York, NY
2025 Lines That Move, Marshall Arts, Memphis, TN
2024 It Rose It Fell, Terrace Gallery, London, UK
2024 Something Solid, Marshall Arts, Memphis, TN
Writing and Projects
Founder and Editor, Structure & Imagery (2011 - 2022)
Co-Director, Stout Projects, Brooklyn, NY (2015 - 2017)
Essays published in Two Coats of Paint, Ab-Crit, Painter’s Table, Gamut and No. Magazine
Residencies and Awards
Golden Foundation Residency Program (2014)
Vermont Studio Center (2008)
Contact