Since 1985, Stuart Bender has created graphic, installation, single-channel, multi-channel, and live-performance music/video works which have been exhibited internationally, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Public Corporation for the Arts, the California Arts Council, and commissions from the Long Beach Museum of Art, the Santa Monica Museum of Art, and the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

Exhibitions include the Bonn Videonale and the Deutsher Videokunstpreis in Germany; the Prix Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria; the New York Video Festival at Lincoln Center; the Worldwide Video Festival in the Netherlands; the American Film Institute and the Director's Guild of America in Los Angeles; numerous festival, museum and gallery exhibitions in Brazil, France, Finland, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland and throughout the United States.

Works

While blending electronic media and classical art disciplines, Bender often uses the interpretation of history as a ground for examining the interplay of political and spiritual power, social structures and belief systems. The full body of his work explores socialization and belief systems; privilege and power; stasis and change; and the commonalities evident in the mystical and the natural. By framing his philosophical concerns in technologically driven forms, he crafts his work at the crossroads of art and technology, at the boundary between fiction and reality.

His most recent work, digital prints derived in part from images in his video works, are inspired by the billboard and automobile-saturated landscape of Southern California. In the series “With Abandon.” he uses the detritus of the car culture as a sketchpad, to explore this characteristic of the region’s sensibility. He also makes extensive use of the figure, as in “Sanctuary,” a print series that merges drawing and photography, under the influence of the garish, sedate, crowded, isolated, and media driven society that is Los Angeles.