Allen Bentley at Bridgette Mayer Gallery

Allen Bentley Explores Motion and Emotion in “Flight”

The Bridgette Mayer Gallery will host Allen Bentley’s latest solo exhibition, “Flight”, from September 2 through October 25, 2025. Known for his expressive exploration of movement, Bentley unveils a brand-new body of work that translates the intensity and intimacy of dance into bold, gestural paintings and drawings. The exhibition is anchored by Bentley’s fascination with ballet and contemporary dance—not as performance, but as raw, vulnerable human expression.

Allen Bentley’s work in “Flight” doesn’t capture dancers in static poses. Instead, it reflects their perpetual becoming—the falter, the surge, the breath between moments. Drawing inspiration from live dance performances as a muse and metaphor, Bentley explores the space where tension meets surrender. His lines are urgent, loose, and full of fire. His palette hums with emotion. The figures may blur or vanish mid-motion, but what remains is the truth of movement, preserved in oil and canvas.

This exhibition will be on display at the Bridgette Mayer Gallery in Philadelphia, and will feature a special artist reception and happy hour on Friday, September 12, from 5:00 to 7:30 p.m.

^{(left) Allen Bentley, To Reach To Be, 2025, Oil on linen, 18 x 12 inches
(right) Allen Bentley, At the Edge of Us, 2025, Oil on canvas, 30 x 22 inches}

Allen Bentley’s Legacy in Gesture and Connection

Throughout his celebrated career, Allen Bentley has honed a visual language centered on rhythm, connection, and human motion. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s MFA program, Bentley teaches Figure Drawing and Painting at Montgomery College and serves as chair of the Christopher Lyon Scholarship selection committee at UPenn. His paintings have appeared at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, and even the Automobili Lamborghini Museum in Bologna, Italy, following a recent commission celebrating Lamborghini’s 60th anniversary.

The artist’s voice resonates not just in his brushwork, but in his personal artist statement: “I am not depicting dance. I am chasing the truth that lives in a hand ever reaching, a chest lifted—mid-breath, a foot barely brushing the floor.” This sense of vulnerability and expression permeates every inch of Flight, blurring the lines between figure and abstraction, between the seen and the felt.

^{(left)Allen Bentley, Rise Up, 2025, Oil on linen, 42 x 30 inches
(right) Allen Bentley, Soaring Through, 2025, Oil on linen, 42 x 30 inches}

In “Flight”, Allen Bentley offers more than paintings—he offers glimpses of our truest selves, told through motion and mark. This exhibition is an invitation to witness grace caught midair, to feel the ache and joy of becoming, and to remember the unspoken language our bodies hold.