CLOSER TO THE WIND

Nature has become an arena for human play and leisure. A human in nature, hiking up a mountain or sailing in the Mediterranean sea, is always an equipped one. While exchanging words about his practice, Edmunds refers to the Norwegian expression “there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes”. Garments become vital parts of our body as our safety and good health depend on them. At the same time, our play as much as our work, become extensions of ourselves into the world. We could say that our clothes extend our skins.

The work of Ben Edmunds can be seen as an investigation into the crossover of painting and branding – perhaps a shocking idea at first, but nothing new if we consider the ways an artist makes work to communicate a message, connect emotionally with their target market (in this case the art audience) and motivate their potential buyers. Referring back to Andy Warhol – possibly the first artist who became his own commercial institution – Edmunds is well aware of his part of the system, maintaining an empathetic and critical position at the same time. Art not only follows a market logic, but it also operates within the intellectual and emotional sphere.

As a twofold process that occurs in two separate studios, the works are the result of assembling an intuitive approach to painting with the rigorous design and implementation of graphic elements, drawing influences from mid-century modernist painting (in the line of Jules Olitski or Mark Rothko) at the same time as graphic designer Otl Aicher, to fashion brands such as Alyx Studio and Off White. Spraying fabric dye into large pre-washed canvases,

Words like “Horizons”, “Hope” appear on the canvases and together with the work titles Love indestructible or All the time we spent here, language invites the viewer to reflect upon existential feelings and ways of inhabiting the world. Similarly to the practice of Bas Jan Ader who said “I want to do a piece where I go to the Alps and talk to a mountain. The mountain will talk of things which are necessary and always true, and I shall talk of things which are sometimes, accidentally true”1 , the works of Edmunds distil a romantic affect, developing an artistic practice that is suggestive and idealized. An invitation to dream and reach further. Ultimately, Edmunds is interested in materialising the human urge to transcend, be in the sports or in painting. But what matters is not the transcendence itself, rather the quest for it.

1. As quoted by his friend Bill Leavitt on “In Search of the Miraculous”, Jan Verwoert, Afterall Books (2006).

Text written as result of an exchange between Ben Edmunds and Cristina Ramos