Benjamin Gonzalez

My name is La Buruquena, I am an artist living and working in New York City with ties to Philadelphia. I have been honing my skills and techniques for the past fifteen years creating masks and paintings reflective of my culture, beliefs and of those cultures that surround me. As an artist I am seeking a greater understating of myself and of the universe. I seek understanding through the exploration of differences and/or similarities in a global and/or individualized culture, belief, ideology, religion, symbols, words/texts, iconography, theories, myths, and toponymies. I creat work that I like to call surreformationism. Surreformationism in its pure state is an artistic expression and understanding of history and cosmology in an attempt to understand the implicit order in the whole of being and to reform extreme or excessive zeal or devotion. Where as religion only allows for a distorted understanding of the cosmos and all of manifest existence, including various realms of consciousness and unconsciousness. Religion separates and isolates the body, mind and spirit while reinforcing its own misguided understanding of history and natural forces that govern the cosmos. While most religions have a system of cosmology that governs beliefs they also have extreme philosophy that leads to zealous behaviors and intolerance.

Surreformationist searches for the strictly physical Universe, which is the concern of the traditional sciences, and uses this information to demystify religious dogma. Using free association, dream analysis, and the conscious and unconscious thoughts as well as scientific knowledge in-order to develop methods of liberating ones own understanding of the cosmos not that which is imposed on us by a small minority of zealous corrupt power hungry few.

Surreformationist art allows for both worlds to collide, the scientific and spiritual in order to explore it’s origin thus searching through history for the origin of symbols, words/text, icons, theories, myths, toponymies, with in a religious belief and on secular society in order to explore the differences and commonality among them and understand it's impact on present day practices.

To explore religious zeal in order to understand and demystify exaggerated religious zealotry, intolerance and its unwillingness to recognize and respect differences of opinions and beliefs of others.

To juxtaposition different religion/belief in order to explore archaic belief and compare the differences and/or their communing thread that binds them together in origins of inception or in current practice.

Surreformationism is the ability to demystify religion not to take away it's power but to bring a greater understanding of each others beliefs thus elevating ones own place and understanding in the universe.

One can not be afraid of that which we do not know or understand for it is human nature to explore and grow in order to gain higher understand of our selves and our surrounding. But in doing so never allowing fear to cloud our mind and stop natural evolution.