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For his second show with the gallery, Ben Blatt will exhibit two large graphite drawings and three new watercolor paintings depicting intricate renderings of struggles between natural and man-made forms. Temporal Fever brings a comparison between the large drawings (which are exhibited for the first time after nearly five years of work) and his latest limited-palette watercolors as a subtle shift in tone is revealed. From the detail of the biomechanical architecture of the drawings, the watercolors emerge with a more delicate fusion of references. Both material approaches mirror the conflict between ideologies of western and eastern gardening practices: the western desire to subjugate the natural world against the eastern ideal of harmonious coexistence with nature. Using the precise detail of an engraver or a miniaturist, his depictions of worlds within worlds are embedded with themes of mortality, regeneration, and technological artifice. The contrast between the drawings and paintings reveal Blatt’s stylistic evolution as he adapts the vast trove of art history to the hyper-speed of the digital age by way of Ingres, Wateau and Haeckel.
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Ben Blatt lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He was born in Denver, Colorado and holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. He has exhibited in New York at White Columns, Half Gallery, Halsey Mckay, Bellwether, Feigen Contemporary, as well as at the John Michael Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, WI, and V1 Gallery in Copenhagen, Denmark.