Lisa Bennett’s work perfectly expresses Viktor Shklovsky’s concept of ‘laying bare the device,’ in that she creates lens flares in photographs using paper and collage which employ the viewer’s suspension of disbelief, even as he actively strains to disbelieve. Lisa shows us the very mechanism by which our eyes deceive us, just as the Impressionists showed us both paint and a subject, and the way that Brechtian theater shows us actors, the stage, lights, props and costumes and raw passion–this approach remains the most compelling and powerful tool for awakening consciousness in the viewer, for sharpening his perceptive apparatus and for transcending automotonism. Lisa’s photographs describe with humor and precision the act of looking and rendering. Photographic “artifacts” that would barely register on the retina are made concrete and material, flattening the picture plane and allowing smudges and dust specks to bloom in exquisite presence.
– Emily Newman, “Cadence” 2018 MFA Thesis Exhibition Catalog, University of Delaware, May 2018