Cover Story

Cover Story, presented by Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, brings together Teddy Benfield and Tara Lewis in an exhibition that reconsiders still life as a site of narrative construction, where objects shift from passive subjects to active agents of meaning. The works on view invite a reading aligned with what Bill Brown has described as “thingness:” the moment when objects exceed their function and assert a presence that is cultural, psychological, and affective. Through this lens, both artists challenge how we locate ourselves in relation to the material world and the systems of meaning it sustains. Teddy Benfield destabilizes the boundaries between interior and exterior space, presenting hybrid environments shaped by the psychological and spatial shifts of post-pandemic life. Drawing from still life, architecture, and New England regionalism, his compositions layer houseplants, blueprints, vehicles, and domestic fragments into ambiguous terrains. These works dwell in a space where objects accumulate meaning beyond their use, registering time, memory, and lived experience. In this indeterminate middle ground of part backyard, part interior, and part imagined site, Benfield reframes still life as an expanded field shaped by evolving notions of property, belonging, and personal space. Tara Lewis similarly activates the object as a site of transformation, presenting culturally significant books as carefully staged “portraits.” Adorned with satin bows, titles such as Dracula, Psycho, and The Graduate are displaced from their narrative interiors and reintroduced as visual and symbolic forms. The bow, at once decorative and disruptive, interrupts the book’s graphic authority, softening and obscuring its surface while heightening its presence. In this gesture, Lewis redirects attention from what the book contains to what it represents, allowing its cultural weight, design language, and associative meanings to come to the forefront. The familiar becomes estranged, inviting viewers to reconsider how objects mediate identity, memory, and desire. Together, Benfield and Lewis expand the parameters of still life, positioning it not as a static genre but as a dynamic framework for examining contemporary experience. In Cover Story, objects resist transparency; they assert themselves, accumulate meaning, and invite sustained attention. Teddy Benfield is a Newport-RI based painter and sculptor originally from Southeast Connecticut. He is a graduate of Union College (BFA) and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University (MFA). Teddy’s work is rooted in the genre of still life but mixes interior and exterior spaces with mark making, Americana and a unique perspective of push and pull through the grotesque by using a multitude of textures and painted objects. Teddy’s work creates a balance between uniform objects and painterly manipulations of commonly seen still life objects and motifs of both New England and Europe through different perceptions of space. Tara Lewis’ figurative oil paintings interweave female agency with the complexities of contemporary femininity, employing a narrative that delves into cultural anthropology, individuality, and personhood with an emphasis on self-awareness, irreverence, and satirical insights. By redefining cultural icons through the lens of childhood memories and familiar characters from literature and media culture, her work fosters a dialogue between iconography and the fabric of ordinary life. Tara's paintings push the potential of portraiture and invite viewers to reflect on the fluidity of identity, time, and place. Tara's work has been featured in various solo and group exhibitions in New York City, as well as at ArtCrush at the Aspen Art Museum in CO and the Watermill Center, NY. Tara's work has been presented at The Hole NYC; Southampton Arts Center, New York; Room 57 Gallery, New York, NY; Ki Smith Gallery, New York, NY; and Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York, NY. Her paintings are held in major collections including The Phelan Art Collection, Brooke Shields, The Seavest Collection, Ashley Longshore, and the Bunker Artspace. Tara was recently selected for a painting residency at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, CO. She has been featured in publications such as Artnet News, Cultured, Whitewall, Fine Art Connoisseur and Whitehot Magazine. Tara received a B.A. in Studio Art at the University of New Hampshire and an M.A.T. at SMFA at Tufts University. Her studio practice is based in New York City and New England.

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