There is a corner of Engine Gallery that flips my Lynch switch. I am gliding towards a mysterious item, and as detail increases, so does the attraction. But now repulsion begins to creep in. I can’t stop. I arrive at the item. The depth below the perfect surface of the sphere beguiles. And in the depth –

Chaos and Cacophany!

Strands and puddles and murk and spray and all of it feeling very vulnerable and violent. Spilled.

The gallerist approaches and tells me that the series was created in response to Bennett’s experience of her granddaughter’s malignant tumours. I must know more.

There is not much more available online, and as usual it is an exercise in magic-spoiling, the habit I can’t shake. Simple glass, mirror, varnish, embedded items equally common. Bennett is a former executive at TV Ontario. But of course the real magic of art is that unsolveable effect, much more than the sum of its parts. The flip of the switch.

Tumourous work not pictured, but viewable at the link below.

Diana Bennett at Engine Gallery.