Bennie Flores Ansell: Particle and A Wave

Oct 8th, 2026 - Jan 2027
Opening Party: Thursday, Oct 8th, 6pm-9pm
ON VIEW: Tuesdays-Thursdays, 3pm-6pm
Fridays, 12pm-7pm
Saturdays, 11am-4pm

Bennie Flores Ansell’s work, Particle and A Wave, begins with a physical fact: light is both a particle and a wave. She takes this duality as her subject and her medium. She photographs light that has been projected and shaped by dichroic acrylic, mirrors, theater gels, film and glass. In this process She is returning to the root definition of photography itself: drawing with light. Within this body of work, The Test Pattern Prints form a sub-series drawn from a nearly obsolete image. The form used of the television test pattern was broadcast when a television channel went off the air. That image of suspended transmission, of waiting, took on new meaning during the pause of COVID when she started these pieces. It was a form from another time that suddenly felt exactly right for pause of 2020.

The color in these light projections began as a conversation with Mark Rothko, whose palettes she first carried with her and have since made entirely her own. That conversation started years ago as a young artist, on her first trip to Europe, standing before Rothko's Seagram Murals at the Tate. She was moved in a way She hadn't expected, not intellectually, but physically. Rothko once said that his paintings are places where two sadnesses can meet, so that both people need to feel less sad. She has never forgotten that meeting, one she had with him through his painting, and one that showed her exactly what art can do. Her projections, photographed from light, are an attempt to build that same kind of meeting place, somewhere light, held and shaped, can meet whoever stands in front of it.

Bennie Flores Ansell is a Houston based visual artist. Flores Ansell was born in Manila, Philippines but spent her formative years in the United States. She has lived in Houston since 1994. She is a Professor in the Art Department of the Houston Community College and previously taught at the High School of Performing and Visual Arts. Her degrees include an M.F.A. in Photography from the University of Houston, a B.A. in Photography from the University of South Florida. She was awarded an American Photography Institute Fellowship at New York University and was an Artist in Residence at the Asia Society Museum in Houston. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at the International Center for Photography, Festival De La Luz in Argentina, The Daegu Photography Biennale in South Korea, Uno Art Space Stuttgart, Germany and at Patricia Conde Galeria in Mexico City. Her work is in many private collections and most recently one of her pieces was acquired by the Southeast Museum of Photography.

FLATS programming is sponsored by Fresh Arts and is funded in part by the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance