Statement

My practice treats abstraction as a situation to experience rather than an image to decode. I’m interested in how meaning forms through duration: the way the surface asserts itself in real time, and how the viewer’s body, distance, and movement shape what the painting becomes. Working between modernist formal concerns and the critical revisions that followed, I approach abstraction not as a closed, autonomous language but as an active field where material presence and perceptual uncertainty are continuously negotiated.

Color functions as the primary driver, structural, spatial, and affective at once. Rather than settling the picture, chromatic relationships are used to destabilize it, producing moments of optical friction and emotional charge. These intensities are held in counterpoint by organizing devices: hard edges, organic forms, and ambiguous spatial cues that resist easy depth or compositional “resolution,” keeping the painting open to multiple readings as the eye moves across it.

Each work emerges through an iterative back-and-forth that keeps contingency in play. Layering, erasure, and revision are not corrections so much as a method of thinking through paint, allowing the surface to register time as accumulation and trace. The resulting image carries evidence of decisions (hesitations, disruptions, reconfigurations) so that the painting reads as both action and record.

My influences form a dispersed constellation: German Expressionism, English non-figurative painting, contemporary abstraction, pop culture, and metaphysical symbolism. These references aren’t presented as narrative content; they operate more like conceptual and affective pressures inside the work, contributing to a productive instability of meaning. Rather than delivering a fixed message, the paintings stage a tension (visual and psychological) where interpretation is generated through the viewer’s encounter.

Ultimately, the work argues for abstraction as a living, critical mode: a way of producing knowledge through sensation, materiality, and form. By foregrounding embodied perception and the physicality of paint, my paintings keep meaning provisional and resistant to closure while insisting on painting’s continued relevance within contemporary discourse.

Bio

Paul Behnke (b. Memphis, Tennessee) is an American painter whose practice engages contemporary abstraction as a material and perceptual inquiry. Working through chromatic intensity, gestural mark-making, and the formal tensions of non-objective painting, Behnke’s work foregrounds the physicality of paint and the viewer’s embodied encounter with the surface. He earned a BFA in Painting from the Memphis College of Art.

Behnke has presented solo exhibitions in New York City, Philadelphia, Heidelberg, Saint Augustine, and Memphis, and his work has been included in curated group exhibitions internationally, including projects in San Francisco, Honolulu, London, Dublin, Glasgow, Paphos, the Netherlands, Cernay-lès-Reims, and New York. His paintings have received critical attention in outlets such as Hyperallergic Weekend, The New Criterion, and The New Republic, where they have been discussed within broader debates surrounding abstraction and contemporary painterly practice.

In addition to his studio practice, Behnke contributes to critical discourse as a writer and editor. His essays and reflections on painting have appeared in AbCrit: A Forum for Debate on Abstract Art, Painters’ Table, Gamut, and No. Magazine. He served as co-editor of Shad Runn, an independent art zine based in Memphis, and has published Structure and Imagery—a blog devoted to contemporary painting and visual culture—since 2011. From 2015 to 2017, he co-directed Stout Projects, an artist-run initiative in Bushwick, Brooklyn, dedicated to exhibiting emerging and mid-career artists.

Behnke lived in Taos, New Mexico, for three years before returning to Memphis, Tennessee, where he currently lives and works.

CV- select

Education
1999 BFA, Painting, Memphis College of Art, Memphis, TN

Residencies
2014 Golden Foundation Residency Program, New Berlin, NY
2008 Vermont Studio Center Residency, Johnson, VT

Exhibitions (*solo)
2025 Lines That Move, Marshall Arts, Memphis, TN
2025 Cross Currents: New York–London, Helm Contemporary, New York, NY

2024 Something Solid, Marshall Arts, Memphis, TN
2024 It Rose, and It Fell, Patchworks, London, UK

2023 My Love is Winter: Gray Paintings by Paul Behnke, International Gallery of Contemporary Art, Anchorage, AK*
2023 Darker Than a Blackbird’s Retina, Calder Art Supplies Studio, Huddersfield, UK
2023 Within You Without You, Prallsville Mills, Stockton, NJ
2023 As Seen on the Radio (curated by Graham Dane), International Gallery of Contemporary Art, Anchorage, AK

2022 TAAC Inaugural Exhibition, Stables Gallery, Taos Center for the Arts, Taos, NM
2022 Explosive Abstraction, The Wright Contemporary, Taos, NM

2021 On the Road: Bill Page and Paul Behnke, the gallery LTD, Brooklyn, NY

2020 Borderwalls II, The Border, Brooklyn, NY
2020 Way Out, La Grange, Cernay-lès-Reims, France
2020 Grey | Gray (Matter), Divisible Projects, Dayton, OH
2020 नमaskar/Namaskār (curated by Nehal Devi), Mumbai, India (online)

2019 Tides & Currents, SFA Projects, New York, NY
2019 Ear to the Ground, Ely Center of Contemporary Art, New Haven, CT
2019 25th Anniversary Exhibition, The Painting Center, New York, NY

2018 BIG Holiday Show, LABspace, Hillsdale, NY
2018 Surface and Substance, The Painting Center, New York, NY

2017 Strange Entities, Gary Giordano Projects, Brooklyn, NY*
2017 Nothing But Good, PARK 138 X, Tilburg, Netherlands
2017 True Believers, Michael David Studio, Brooklyn, NY
2017 Paperworks, Gary Giordano Projects, Brooklyn, NY
2017 Pro Forma: Context and Meaning in Abstraction, Work Release, Norfolk, VA
2017 New New York: Abstract Painting in the 21st Century, The Curator Gallery, New York, NY
2017 ReStatement, Kunstverein Brackenheim, Brackenheim, Germany
2017 Steal the Show, Flat 3/2, Glasgow, Scotland

2016 The Thing I Came For, Kunstraum Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany*
2016 ReStatement, Schmidt und Schütte, Cologne, Germany
2016 An Occasional Dream, Life on Mars, Brooklyn, NY
2016 Drishti: A Concentrated Gaze, 1285 Avenue of the Americas Gallery, New York, NY
2016 If Color Could Kill, Salena Art Gallery, LIU Brooklyn, Brooklyn, NY
2016 We Are the Dead, Kirk Hopper Fine Art, Dallas, TX

2015 Occo Socko!, Stout Projects, Brooklyn, NY
2015 New New York, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, Honolulu, HI
2015 Color as Form/Form as Color, c2c Project Space, San Francisco, CA
2015 Hello Again, Ground Floor Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2015 Thrice Legendary or Forever Then, Centotto, Brooklyn, NY
2015 Made in Paint, Sam and Adele Golden Gallery, New Berlin, NY

2014 Form and Facture: New Painting and Sculpture from New York, Paul W. Zuccaire Gallery, Stony Brook, NY
2014 Eight Painters, Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, New York, NY

2013 An Awful Rainbow, Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, New York, NY*
2013 Temporal Shifts, Flecker Gallery, Suffolk County Community College, Selden, NY
2013 Meta Vista, 16 Wilson, Brooklyn, NY
2013 What I Like About You, Parallel Art Space, Queens, NY

2012 Like Giants, The Rosenfeld Gallery, Philadelphia, PA*
2012 A Web of Artists, Thomas Deans Fine Art, Atlanta, GA
2012 Heroes, A Small Black Door, Queens, NY
2012 The Art Is Falling Apart, Terrace Gallery, London, UK
2012 Chromophilia, Trestle Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2012 Brucennial, The Bruce High Quality Foundation, New York, NY

2011 Done Paint Done, The Drawers Gallery, London, UK
2011 Faction, University of Dayton, Dayton, OH
2011 Grey Matter, The Painting Center, New York, NY
2011 Process: Abstract Painters, Trestle Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2011 An Exchange with Sol LeWitt, MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA
2011 Summer Invitational, The Hallward, Dublin, Ireland

Panels/Lectures/Presentations/Workshops/Artist Talks
2025 Visiting artist/panelist, Helm Contemporary, New York, NY
Panelist, Trans∙cen∙der Series, Equity Gallery, New York, NY

2018 Panelist, Trans∙cen∙der Series, Brooklyn, NY
Visiting artist/lecturer, National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Ireland

2017 Visiting artist/lecturer, Work Release, Norfolk, VA

2015 Visiting artist/lecturer, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, Honolulu, HI

2014 Artist talk, Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, New York, NY

2013 Visiting artist/lecturer, Flecker Gallery, Suffolk County Community College, Selden, NY

Media-select

2026 Memphis Material (podcast), “Paul Behnke Parts 1 & 2”
2025 Drawing South (podcast), “An Interview with Paul Behnke”

2022 TAAC Talk, virtual studio visit
Tempo Magazine (Taos News), cover image, July 20
Gallery and Studio (William Corwin), “Structural Color”
Ahtcast Podcast, episode feature
Art Spiel, “Paul Behnke: A Champion of Painting”

2021 Art Matters, radio interview

2020 Art Spiel, “Artists on Coping”

2016 Curator Magazine, interview

2014 Figure / Ground, interview
Gorky’s Granddaughter, video interview
Painters’ Table, “The Ability of Paint”

2013 Hyperallergic (John Yau), “Who’s Afraid of Hot Pink…”
Ahtcast Podcast, episode feature
“An Awful Rainbow” (James Panero), review/essay

2012 The New Republic (Jed Perl), “The Brucennial”

Publications and Catalogs
2017 Pro Forma, exhibition catalog (essay by Dr. Vittorio Colaizzi)

2016 The Thing I Came For, exhibition catalog (essay by David Rhodes)

2015 The Black and White Project, Yifat Gat, Saint-Chamas, France

2014 Form and Facture, exhibition catalog (essay by Karen Levitov)
Eight Painters, exhibition catalog

2013 An Awful Rainbow, exhibition catalog (essay by James Panero)

2010 Like Giants, exhibition catalog (essay by John Yau)

Curatorial Projects
2025 Lines That Move, Marshall Arts, Memphis, TN

2024 Something Solid, Marshall Arts, Memphis, TN

2022 Lauren Dana Smith: Box Breath, The Wright Contemporary, Taos, NM
Ira Wright: Self-Portraits, The Wright Contemporary, Taos, NM

2020 Monklike Habits, Online Project Space (Director/Curator)

2015–2017 Stout Projects, Co-Director, Brooklyn, NY

2014 Eight Painters, Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, New York, NY