Benjamin Lewis
Paintings from today: Excerpts of present experiences inside the overture of place
“Paintings are not like the internet...”
Sitting amongst other works in the show, my paintings - all five of them, breathe in a space of coexistence where they stand, rather than hang.
I don't like the word hang, nor do I like to talk about a painting 'being hanged'. I prefer to call a painting on a wall a type of experimental installation.
I am interested in how fabric reacts to paint - natural fabric such as denim and natural tarpaulin. The ringlets found on either side of the denim paintings resemble a type of lineage found outside of the painting from itself.
I like to think of the ringlets as a space where the 'ability to receive' and the 'could have' perhaps whirled into the a-critical demands of the happening and the present. The ringlets not only serve as a practicality of installation, but they also transpire a new sense of the metropolitan: domestic, mechanised, automated and industrialised.
Maybe the denim was used over a small truck in north-west India, or was it used for a family-sized tent?
