Ben Nathan: Structure @ 43 Inverness Street

On Now

14 JUNE - 13 JULY 2013

Ben Nathan

Structure

PV : Thursday 13 June 6-9 pm

43 Inverness Street is pleased to announce Structure, a solo exhibition of Ben Nathan’s paintings. Known for his exploration of urban infrastructures and his reflection of past and present human technologies, Nathan’s latest series continues his exploration into painted abstraction of the vernacular built environment. With large areas of unmodulated saturated colour, the images flatten the familiar, remaking and rendering these sites – the seawall, the water tower, and the bridge — in a manner which brazenly treads between abstraction and figuration.

Seascape, 2012 is an image of a seawall. The sea itself is not present in the image, yet oceanic force and power is communicated through scraped arcs of contrasting colours surging upwards and out of the picture. The painting is a study of stasis and motion. The scraped areas are contrasted with rectilinear forms of hard-edged stripes and craggy shapes of bold red, black and white. These dynamic forms and colours combine to create a landscape of permanence and upheaval. The show also features another image of almost indeterminate source on first inspection, Gateway, 2013, is a simple composition which hides a complexity of spatial and social architectural constructs. Composed from an image taken of a part of a bridge in New York City, Gateway presents an imposing, almost threatening array of spikes and gnashing bars, but is paradoxically seductive because of the unfamiliar perspective and abstracted flatness. Chateau d’Eau, 2012, a painting whose original inspiration was a water tower nestled in a rocky French landscape, is constructed in two parts. The tower itself and the surrounding space are separated structurally, by means of a specially mated set of supports onto which the canvas is stretched.

The boldness of colour and line are only superseded by this renting of figure and ground. Beacon-like, this water tower has achieved iconic status through aesthetic decision making. These and other recent works, presented over two floors display a depth of commitment to the painted surface and its ability to shift between sensuous depth and representational allusion.

Ben Nathan, a graduate of The Slade School of Fine Art, Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem and The Prince’s Drawing School. He lives and works in London. In 2012, he was awarded the International Jewish Artist of the Year award, The Ben Uri Gallery.

please visit http://www.bnathan.co.uk

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Conflict and Costume: The Herero Tribe of Namibia

When celebrated photographer Jim Naughten visited Namibia for the first time after just leaving college, he encountered a “curiously out-of-place German colonial port,” in the town of Luderitz, before travelling into the harsh and isolated Namib Desert, where he saw people and landscapes influenced by a still-present colonial past.

“The incongruity of these images,” he writes in his artist’s monograph, Conflict and Costume, “with nomadic tribes, Teutonic architecture, ghost towns and iron crosses all set against a desert backdrop, gave me the impression that I had stumbled on to the set of a peculiar spaghetti western, full of anomalies and anachronisms, where the wrong buildings had been ordered and misplaced actors cast.”

It was here that he first met members of the Herero tribe, whose contemporary dress was greatly influenced by the clothes worn by Cape Colony settlers who had arrived in Namibia during the 1900s, as well as the German forces who had established rule over the area at the end of the 19th century; an act which had led to conflict between the often brutal colonialists and tribe members.

"(I felt) I had stumbled on to the set of a peculiar spaghetti western, full of anomalies and anachronisms, where the wrong buildings had been ordered and misplaced actors cast.”

In an act of vivid re-appropriation, the Herero women are shown to be wearing Victorian-influenced ceremonial dresses, with the addition of cow horn shaped headdresses, symbolising the importance of cattle to the Herero economy. The men are shown in German Army-influenced uniforms. “Learning that this extraordinary and elegant clothing had its roots in the fashions of the Victorian era and the meeting of two vastly different cultures,” Naughten writes, “I was hooked. Namibia was a country of contrasts and paradoxes – timeless, expansive and enchanting.”

Years later, Naughten returned to photograph the Herero tribe members in earnest, choosing the stark desert as his backdrop in order to foreground the vibrant details of the tribe members’ dress. He chose to photograph weddings, funerals, festivals, military parades and gatherings, and rather than a snapshot of everyday life, the images in Conflict and Costume attempt to capture “the still space, a direct gaze,” as the “re-appropriated clothes combine to create a stillness that allows the past to speak.”

Conflict and Costume by Jim Naughten is out now, published by Merrell.

Text by Ananda Pellerin

Ananda Pellerin is a London-based writer and regular contributor to anothermag.com.