Ben Young
Ben Young was born in 1973 in Amersham, England, to an American Mother and a British Father. The most common artist comparison has been of Jean-Michel Basquiat, due to the primitive graffiti structure of his paintings. Text is layered upon layers of paint, oil, collage and spraypaint on canvas.
Young feels closest to Abstract Expressionism though, especially to Jackson Pollock.
Young’s description of his work is a real juxtaposition of meanings and experiences, and probably the closest description of the role of contemporary artists today. Mixing the ancient tradition of painting’ with ‘scrawling’ text reconnects ‘school days and adolescence.’ inspired by our overexposure to world media through the internet and newspapers, the repetition of events then transpire as the subject of the paintings. ‘In this sense my work bears the hallmarks of propaganda’ Young asserts.
Curator: Bas Kuiper