Mondegreen Codex
1,000 piece puzzle featuring the artwork of Benjamin Styer
In Benjamin Styer's Mondegreen Codex (2021) a continuous narrative of flying creatures, lost souls, and scattered musical energies unfold amid multicolored crystal towers and rivers. Overhead, shapes dart around a darkening sky punctuated by black portals.
A Mondegreen is- of course- something, often a lyric, that one hears mishears or misinterprets- think Toto's "I left my brains down in Africa" or Elton John's "Hold me closer Tony Danza". In Mondegreen Codex however, Styer shows how a mondegreen could be visual as well. The painting is, in large part, an epic visual mishearing, primarily of Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights but also maybe of Candy Land and Saturday morning cartoons.
This may well be the most puzzle you've ever put together. You didn't mishear that.
Read the Kinstler interview with Benjamin Styer here.
About the Artist
Benjamin Styer was born in Framingham, Massachusetts and received his BFA in art from the University of Massachusetts in Boston, Massachusetts. He is represented by Moskowitz Bayse gallery in Los Angeles and lives and works in Northampton, Massachusetts.