Ben Cain
Ben Cain’s multidisciplinary practice focuses upon the combination of a primary physiological or sensory experience of space and objects, alongside a cerebral experience which involves the viewer having to construct images, spaces and objects from given material such as text, objects, and “raw material.” Overlapping crafted objects with industrial manufacture, and the tool or machine with the art object, the work is characterised by use-value and uselessness. The objects stand both as artefacts and exercises, records of and catalysts for production, in turns they are both active and inert. Thus, viewers are offered material for processes of making which are yet to begin, or they are presented with spaces that serve as platforms for their constructive engagement with the work. Whilst sometimes addressing the idea that art might engender communal experience and thereby realise collective action, the centrality of the viewer’s constitutive role in the production of a subject is a recurring theme. Cain’s work approaches the reader as one who might belong to a potentially effective group, gently urging the consideration of the implications of their status as members of “the public.” Nevertheless the work remains sceptical about the rhetoric’s of the term “participatory practice"–making and doing are key …
Ben Cain’s multidisciplinary practice focuses upon the combination of a primary physiological or sensory experience of space and objects, alongside a cerebral experience which involves the viewer having to construct images, spaces and objects from given material such as text, objects, and “raw material.” Overlapping crafted objects with industrial manufacture, and the tool or machine with the art object, the work is characterised by use-value and uselessness. The objects stand both as artefacts and exercises, records of and catalysts for production, in turns they are both active and inert. Thus, viewers are offered material for processes of making which are yet to begin, or they are presented with spaces that serve as platforms for their constructive engagement with the work. Whilst sometimes addressing the idea that art might engender communal experience and thereby realise collective action, the centrality of the viewer’s constitutive role in the production of a subject is a recurring theme. Cain’s work approaches the reader as one who might belong to a potentially effective group, gently urging the consideration of the implications of their status as members of “the public.” Nevertheless the work remains sceptical about the rhetoric’s of the term “participatory practice"–making and doing are key components of the work, but these processes are still thought to be the property of the viewer as much as of the artist.
Solo exhibitions of Cain’s work have been presented at institutions such as Hordaland Art Centre in Bergen, Wiels Centre for Contemporary Art in Brussels, and Zagreb’s Museum of Modern Art. HIs work has been included in group exhibitions at Tate Modern, South London Gallery, London’s National Portrait Gallery, Belgrade’s Museum of Modern Art, and Brukenthal Museum in Sibiu, among other venues.
Courtesy of the artist
