Ben Galaday is an artist and educator working in NYC. Their current sculptural work looks at the fragility of meaning associated with the deterioration of cognitive functions due to dementia and other forms of agnosia. Galaday holds an MFA in Sculpture from University of South Florida and a BFA in Ceramics from Oregon College of Art and Craft.

Framed by culturally determined and commodified myths whose artifacts are left embedded in the fiber. Boil it down, distill it to the point of fracture, nonsense, then allow it to grow back, bent and strange, with awareness along the fault lines. A fresh batch of extraneous particularities clinging to the roots.

My work describes the dilemma of communication and the dichotomy of intimacy; the profound satisfaction of being seen and the acute discomfort of exposure.

I’m compelled to cultivate nostalgia while destabilizing sentimentality. Utilizing theatricality and the uncanny I explore the disorder of an assumed reality, further exacerbating the alienation from one’s self and surroundings.

I’m interested in cartooning the fundamental. To create imposters, preposterous symbols of cherished and repulsive drives. To examine and provoke the profound shared sublime through clumsy artifice and campy artificiality.

Shimmering in the precarious state between the familiar and foreign, seductive and demoralized, my work addresses the idiosyncratic mechanisms of cognition with the anxiety of an existential hypochondriac. I make alluring objects with ulterior motives; deceptively poppy and fizzy with an underlying dread and perverse self-awareness.