artists

BEN NEEDHAM
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www.benneedham.com

Emerging artist, Ben Needham’s most recent work reveals how a “landscape” serves as a metaphor for “memory.” Needham describes this imagery, “Layers of unearthed/geological cross-sections allude to the concepts of time and accumulation (natural processes). The angular cutaway of the landplates, suggests our possessive nature through the privatization of land, but also represents private realms of property, memory, and space." 

In presenting details without context Ben Needham inspires the viewer’s associations. Presenting elements of an untold story- a factory with a puff of smoke, a quaint house, laundry swaying on a line- makes the viewer question the narrative that surrounds these details. However, it is difficult to imagine a story from these details because these isolated landmasses cannot sustain life. Encouraging the viewer to imagine but at the same time limiting his resources, the artist reveals man’s unsatisfied desire to keep his memory intact. But just as it seems strange to artificially divide and manipulate nature- as evident by the cut-up swath of land folded to bring two homes side by side- so, memory, which is subjective and ever-transforming in one’s mind, is almost impossible to keep intact or “reclaim." 

Needham’s landmasses, represented as geological diagrams, are symbolic of a search for understanding. Through multiple studies of earth samples, Needham’s works recall the environmental engineer’s examination of outcrops, used to predict geological patterns deep within the earth. Using landscape as a metaphor for memory, each work portrays a mental landscape. Surrounded by fields of moving blue paint, devoid of humanity, the image feels like a dream in which symbols are clues to the dreamer’s subconscious mind. Thus, by using landscape as a metaphor for memory, Needham discusses man’s search for an understanding of his own mind. 

His work has been featured in various galleries, including the Gallery Op-Nord in Stuttgart, Germany and the Ichys Gallery in Tokyo, Japan; in addition to a number of San Francisco galleries. Needham received a B.S. in Fine Arts from Skidmore College and an MFA in Painting from the San Francisco Art Institute. He lives and works in New York.