New Horizons: John Behnke’s Journey Through Art, Space and Time
- Project Onward Staff
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
June 17th, 2025
Written by Caroline Crutsinger-Perry
Project Onward is proud to present an extended exhibit by artist John Behnke, following successful showings at Epiphany Gallery and Chicago Expo. False Guides and New Horizons is a collection of captivatingly detailed and colorful imagined landscapes.
Behnke has always been inspired by the landscapes and scenery of Chicagoland. He remembers riding on the CTA or the Metra with his mom and drawing or sketching the layout of the area. Throughout his life and artistic journey, while his style and skill have evolved, this same process of capturing scenes and landscapes has remained central to John’s practice.
For Behnke, art is deeply personal. He describes the power of art as a form of self-medication. When stressed or overwhelmed, the practice of drawing and creating something beautiful can help your mind to slow down and focus on a single thing. This is the base of many of Behnke’s early art pieces.
The exhibition title False Guides and New Horizons is a beautiful continuation of the name of Behnke’s Chicago Expo exhibition title, titled simply False Guides. This show at Project Onward presents a more positive message and outlook on life. The anchor work of the show, titled New Horizons shows a shepherd herding her flock of geese through a landscape recovering from devastation. After a catastrophic event, the shepherd and her flock come and fill the area again with growth and community. This piece has a beautiful meaning: what once was abandoned, and empty can be filled in again.
This is a theme that Behnke hopes to continue in works and in a future show in a New York City gallery in January 2026. For this upcoming show, Behnke hopes to practice and perfect his fine line style drawings, bringing a new style to his works that show us the power of transformation from ugly to beautiful again.
Behnke’s favorite piece in the show is a work called Ana. A tribute to a familiar scene from his commute on the L, the piece captures a train gliding through a neighborhood before ascending a towering mountain in the distance. This work is the conclusion of the show, which is meaningful in that this work is a retur
n to the beginning of his artist journey. Ana represents a full-circle moment that reaffirms the enduring power of memory, imagination, and place in Behnke’s art.
Join us on Friday, June 20th to see John Behnke’s False Guides and New Horizons.
