A carburetor intake blown up to a size so massive it renders the driver meaningless, growing on the canvas in place of a human head — this is one of the most jarring images in Australian artist Ben Quilty's first solo exhibition in New York. Titled "Devil/God," the show runs from October 15 through November 14 at albertz benda gallery. Using his signature impasto brushwork, Quilty pushes the car — a symbol he has returned to again and again over the years — to a near-absurd scale, pointing directly at the pride and aggression embedded in masculinity.
The narrative starting point for the exhibition comes from Arthur Conan Doyle's 1928 short story "When the World Screamed." In the story, Professor Challenger drills into the Earth's core to prove that the planet is a living organism, only to trigger a scream and the violent earthquakes that follow. Nearly a century later, Quilty takes what was once purely a piece of science-fiction setup and holds it up against the ecological collapse unfolding in the real world today — for him, this is evidence that the planet has truly been pushed to its breaking point.
Beyond the car-themed paintings, the exhibition also features a sculpture: a statue of the Virgin Mary, built up from alternating layers of leather and plywood. These materials are no accident — the leather references the belts once used by church schools to physically punish children. A religious symbol originally meant to represent comfort is thus given an ambiguous double identity, functioning at once as solace and as a possible vehicle for complicity and violence.
In "Devil/God," Quilty has no interest in drawing a clean line between perpetrator and victim, and beauty and brutality are deliberately blurred together. The canvases are filled with slashing brushstrokes, distorted bodies, and forms that carry an air of menace — yet beneath all of this, traces of fragility and innocence still surface. The work as a whole hangs suspended between rage and empathy, refusing to rush toward any easy answer.
"Devil/God" runs from October 15 to November 14, 2026, at albertz benda gallery in New York.
