To dig into Ben Stagl’s tour-de-force solo show, the best place to start is at its center. Unfolded, like all exhibitions at Gallery HOMELAND, flows through an angular lobby that twists through the Ford Building (SE 11th & Division).
In the heart of the building, in the main space on the north wall, is a piece called “First Snap.” And if your daddy was a carpenter, you’ll immediately recognize the single straight-if-splattered line as created by a carpenter’s chalk line. It hovers diagonally, simply in the center of a long sheet of paper. And its import as metaphor is central, because anything built is only as good as the first snap and its perpendicular. (more…)