Ben Buchanan: Time Travel & the Invisible Body
—Time Travel & the Invisible Body is an edited selection of recent paintings. It extends Ben’s interest in ‘pattern-making’ and abstraction, involving elements of illustration in that explore the painting’s potential to hold mauri. He creates works in groups and describes them as ‘friends’ who generate korero amongst one another. They talk of the complexities of life in the Anthropocene and offer critique around individual and community responsibility in this reality.
Buchanan reimagines the radical birth of abstraction, or the disappearance of the body. He looks at the sequels of abstraction and imagines a space where the highs and lows of cultural production meet and /or diverge in circular time loops. What happens to the body when it moves through the imagined space of time travel? What happens to art histories when viewed through a contemporary lens.
These works playfully suspend a myriad of questions and possibilities. They swing between cynicism and sincerity; they have a casual quality while also being ambitious.
