Birmingham, UK

Benny Watson’s (b. 1998) darkly humorous gestural paintings express the anxieties and glimmers of hope in the modern, conditioned age. Combining abstraction and figuration with tension and expressive dynamism, half-formed figures are smothered amongst layers of vibrant paint applied with bold marks. Without following compositional guidelines, thick trails of oil paint or frenetic jets jag and spray across the canvas. Employing the use of mixed media, plasterboard, paper, sand and dust he constantly adds and subtracts, building up dense layers of texture beneath and atop each other - the painting constructs itself whilst tearing itself apart; a delicate balance that creates kinetic tension while also giving his work an extremely sensory and cinematic quality. Influenced heavily by music and film, nature and mythology, the self-taught UK born and based artist creates a blackly comic visual language which he invites viewers not to understand, but to interpret.