Alex Couwenberg is one of southern California's rising abstract painters, just as Karl Benjamin had been two generations ago; but pairing them in exhibition is more than a ritual exercise in torch-passing. Benjamin has long been mentor to Couwenberg, and the coupling - although giving each artist his own room - allowed for stylistic comparison. Benjamin, one of the pioneers of hard-edge painting in the late 1950s, also explored minimalism and pattern painting in prescient ways, always thinking about form and sequence even as he responded intuitively to color and shape. Benjamin is never afraid to let things get beautiful ; rather, he avoids pretty. His eye-to-mind-and-back-again approach doesn't simply give Couwenberg permission to play with line and color, it almost insists he does so - and does so with a crafty abandon, an athletic way of thinking about where and how something happens, how one has to take chances, and how one educates oneself about such chances so that they're always worth taking. Couwenberg, enamored also of mid-century design, allows himself more frivolity than Benjamin does, so his elaborate but tightly wound interplays of converging diagonals and itchy serrations pack more goofy surprise. But, in juxtaposition, they bring out the subtle wit percolating throughout Benjamin's work as well.

Peter Frank, 2012
Huffington Post