Disarticulation

This painting depicts a peculiar association of subject to physical space.
It is part of a series which examines the artifacts of temporary migration, looking at how people move into a neutral environment and start to inhabit it.

The use of expressive brushwork, sharp contrasts and spatial distortions illuminate or add information while symbolic elements, informed by the subjects activity, or the artists own reaction to the space, further disrupt the illusion of sheer figurative representation.
The works are intended to be neither illusory nor capsules of time, rather, instances of mnemonic stasis wherein an existential query is substantiated.
Embracing a synthesis of both external and internal realities, the series interweaves themes of dislocation, habitation and the subliminal response of the psyche towards the unknown.

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Ben Howe is an Australian artist born in London. Over the course of nearly two decades, he has explored the nature of consciousness, personal history and the incongruities of memory through his artwork, which has taken him to England, Germany, China and the USA.
He holds a Masters of fine art with distinction from RMIT and is the recipient of numerous grants, international residencies and fellowships.
Action, isolation and refraction surface as thematic currents in the practice of an artist whose work functions as a platform for broader considerations relating to the physical and subjective self within contemporary society.
Ben has developed a signature quasi scientific aesthetic that is at once hyper-realistic yet reductive. His at times stark and lonely works are often derived from preliminary explorations in other media such as sculpture, photography and film; his process distorting the boundaries of the real and the perceived.