Ben Matthews

Description

Ben Matthews continues his exploration into a unique, fantastical and sometimes unsettling universe. The characters from this place exist at the edges of sideshows, of archaic advertisement and of storybooks none of which ever quite manifested themselves in our reality. Works on canvas and on folding, triptych panels unveil a mysteriously disconcerting series of images and scenes from this not-quite time/place. "Working in a poster format, I try to give the impression that my paintings have already served their purpose. They are documentation's of people, places, events, products, and moments in time that did, did not, or will exist. For my characters, I use antique photographs collected at flea markets. These people who have been sold for a few bucks are recreated in my work. They are given new names and meaning. The final step to completing a work is to age it. By doing so, I try to give them a sense of reality. They exist as used objects with mysterious pasts. They may have been in someone's basement collecting dust, found at an abandoned museum, or bought at a pawnshop for $2.00. My latest series of work consists of studies by explorers, scientists and inventors from a different but parallel history. They depict odd creatures that have adapted atypically or have been created by man for some malevolent purpose. They may be pages taken from a mad scientist's notebooks showing preliminary ideas for bizarre inventions or they can be cryptic field studies from unknown expeditions." - Ben Matthews

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