Toward Silence: M. Benjamin Herndon

Spanning nearly a decade of practice, Toward Silence traces M. Benjamin Herndon’s evolving engagement with the phenomena of light, color and materiality, examining how one’s perception may shift as their physical perspective does. Comprising nine works rendered primarily with metal oxide pigments and graphite, on linen, granite, wood, and paper, Toward Silence embodies Herndon’s union of scientific precision and spiritual inquiry in material form.

In Toward Silence, Herndon considers quiet as both subject and method – a way of being that resists the noise of contemporary visual culture. His work emerges from a state of deep listening, where sound, light, and material converge in meditative stillness. Translating the rhythms of music and the natural world into visual form, Herndon invites viewers to slow their perception and enter a space of calm awareness – one that moves, as he writes, “toward the silence of contemplation.”

M. Benjamin Herndon grew up in the Sierra Nevada mountains of Northern California and now lives in Providence, Rhode Island, where he makes work in his studio in an historic textile mill. Herndon received his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2016 and his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 2012. He has been an artist in residence at the Tamarind Institute for Fine Art Lithography, the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, and Marble House Project, among others. His work has been exhibited in galleries across the United States, France, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, and China.