Benglis began her career in the midst of the Postminimal movement, pushing the traditions of painting and sculpture into new territories. She initiated several bodies of work in the late 60s and early 70s that set the course for her subsequent practice.
Her wax paintings, which began with brushed skin-like layers of pigmented beeswax and dammar resin progressed, in one series, to the use of a blowtorch as a kind of brush, manipulating colors into a marbleized surface that seemingly fought against the constraints of the lozenge-shaped Masonite panels. The impulse to see these forms flow beyond the structure of a traditional support led Benglis to embrace pigmented latex, which she began pouring directly onto the floor.
Concurrently, she began working with pigmented polyurethane foam, building the volume of her sculptures vertically by pouring the oozing, lava-like forms against walls and in the corners of spaces or over constructed armatures and chicken wire, which she removed after the wall mounted foam pours solidified.
Painted with metallic sparkle, Sculp-Metal, or layers of sprayed, vaporized aluminum, copper, zinc, or tin, the works are further complicated by the reflections of their surfaces, conflating the sculptural object with painterly space.
In the early 70s, Benglis took new media technologies as her material, producing video art at a time when it was still in its early stages as a medium. Her experimental videos feature performative actions and technological mediation to explore themes of physical presence, narcissism, sexuality, and gendered identity. Benglis extended her innovative use of materials into the natural realm when, in , she first used water as an element in her sculptures.
