A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.

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Benjamin Larose

Associate Professor, Adjunct

Contact

Professional Site

Bio

Benjamin Larose is a Québécois artist and Associate Professor, Adjunct at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, SAIC. Larose holds a Master of Design in Fashion, Body and Garment from SAIC and a Bachelor of Media Arts from Emily Carr University in Vancouver, Canada.

Since coming to Chicago in 2014, Larose was the recipient of the New Artist Society Scholarship and the RumChata Foundation Fellowship. In 2017-18, Larose participated in the BOLT residency program at the Chicago Artists Coalition. He subsequently presented three solo exhibitions in two years, including a solo booth at EXPO Chicago 2018. In 2019, Larose was named Breakout Artist by Chicago’s NewCity Magazine. The same year, he won second prize in Miami University’s Young Sculptors Competition. His visual art work was presented in several group exhibitions across the Midwest at venues such as 6018|North, Ralph Arnold Gallery, Chicago Cultural Center, Illinois State Museum Art Gallery, Hiestand Gallery, Lubeznik Center, and John Michael Kohler Art Center.

In 2021, Larose was awarded a generous grant from the Canada Council for the Arts for the creation of his performance project: NOT AMERICAN. The Canada Council for the Arts is among the most prestigious awards for Canadian artists. NOT AMERICAN completed a successful premiere run at Chicago’s prestigious Steppenwolf Theater in June 2023. It was followed by a second run at Chicago’s The Den Theatre in June 2024 and a first international presentation at the CINARS Conference held in Montreal, Canada in November 2024.

Awards: Larose has received awards and funding from the city of Chicago, the Illinois Arts Council Agency, and the Canada Council for the Arts. He was also the recipient of the second prize in the William and Dorothy Yeck Award—Young Sculptors Competition, and was named among the Breakout Artists 2019 by NewCity Magazine.

Personal Statement

My practice is as dynamic as I am as a person. It resists tidy definitions and being neatly categorized. There are edges that somewhat delineate this practice, but I am constantly pushing, lifting, and unfolding these edges. My work belongs in a heavily material practice, even though sometimes the work only lives as time-based media. I stack video edits and stories, just as much as I stack found objects in my studio. Visual references, pop culture moments and imaginary characters live alongside the stuff I pick up in thrift stores. I find great freedom in cultivating spontaneity, free association, and a little non-sense. This is what enables me to simultaneously collect wood carvings of raccoons AND put on a wig and film myself pretending to be Leonardo DiCaprio. The space between is where I thrive. 

Work

 

Vimeo

Benjamin Larose, NOT AMERICAN - Trailer, 2024, video trailer

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

In this course we will focus on disciplinary and interdisciplinary art and design practices of contemporary art production. This team-taught, year-long class explores the materials and techniques of surface, space, and time (2D, 3D, and 4D), as well as the connections and interplay of these areas. Core Studio integrates the formal with the conceptual, traditional with the contemporary, and makes visible a variety of approaches in current cultural production in order to foster the development of students? emerging practices as makers and thinkers.

In this interdisciplinary studio course students will be authorized to use a variety of school shops, materials and equipment; including the woodshop, plaster studio, digital lab, sewing machine, hand tools, sound and video production, digital workflows and principles of visual fundamentals. This is a hands-on making class, faculty present artists and content related to a particular toolkit and, or project theme. Every section of Core Studio has shared learning outcomes which are uniquely realized by each Core faculty partnership.

Students should expect a fast-paced studio environment. In Core Studio students will complete short assignments as well as longer multi-week projects. Assignments are designed to help students develop their own ideas in relation to the materials, processes, and themes presented by faculty.

Class Number

1233

Credits

3

Description

Explorations in the design of 'experimental' garments using the basic elements of mass, volume, form and motion. Rather than concerning themselves with current design trends or regular fashion problems, students emphasize bodies as forms in motion or as moving sculpture.

Class Number

1414

Credits

3

Description

This course cultivates a conceptual and interdisciplinary approach to fashion. Through experimentations in object-making, students will engage with traditional and non-traditional materials and processes to question how objects can engage the body. Emphasis will be placed on function through the exploration of constructive processes and placement to body and space.

The course is divided in four topical sections: technique meets body, power in wearability, conceptual artifacts and material matters. Students will be introduced to artists who's work is generally associated with other disciplines but engages fashion, body and garment. For example, artists such as Leigh Bowery, Rebecca Belmore, Brian Jungen, Isa Genzken, and the readings/screenings will vary but may include Susan Sontag's Notes on Camp, Malcolm Gladwell's The Cool Hunt or Robert Friedel's Zipper: An Exploration in Novelty.

Course work involves four major projects, one for each topical section, as well as in-class discussions, reading responses and presentations. The occasional field trip and follow up in-class discussion can also be included.

Class Number

1375

Credits

3

Description

This advanced level course examines the transformation of form and identity with the body. Particular emphasis will be placed on challenging the literal definition of garment through various processes such as draping, deconstruction and reuse. Students will explore scale and materials from hard to soft, flexible and rigid. Projects using found objects and alternative resources will also be introduced. Through various assignments, students will be encouraged to expand outside the common solution, using unfamiliar territories, placing them in new context. Several projects are assigned involving individual and group critiques with development of personal direction related to contemporary issues. Parallel development in sculptural practices and design will also be examined to see the emerging context of garment as art.

Class Number

1372

Credits

3

Description

This advanced level course examines the transformation of form and identity with the body. Particular emphasis will be placed on challenging the literal definition of garment through various processes such as draping, deconstruction and reuse. Students will explore scale and materials from hard to soft, flexible and rigid. Projects using found objects and alternative resources will also be introduced. Through various assignments, students will be encouraged to expand outside the common solution, using unfamiliar territories, placing them in new context. Several projects are assigned involving individual and group critiques with development of personal direction related to contemporary issues. Parallel development in sculptural practices and design will also be examined to see the emerging context of garment as art.

Class Number

2244

Credits

3