08.03.2024 / 21.03 - 07.04.2024

MK II Studio / Shoreditch Modern Gallery, London

Curated by Benny Watson and Anaïs Masetti 

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There’s a violence to a how a shard is created. A shard of glass, ceramic, rock, or in the case of Benny Watson’s debut solo exhibition, a mirror. When something shatters, shards spread among the floor like wildfire. Large ones you can collect carefully with your fingers, smaller pieces you can’t see easily that need sweeping up, and tiny ones that might just cut you if you forget about them. Coming from the derivative of the Dutch ‘schaard’, it means to shear. To break off.

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With this exhibition, Benny Watson looks at his personal process of grief after losing his father in 2022 and his grandmother the following year, a process he claims he is still going through and will continue to for some time. This series of paintings feels like a creative catharsis, diving into the depths and ranges of his emotions in the stages of grief to acceptance and everything that comes in between, experiencing it out of order and all over again. This tiring rigmarole may be encapsulated most succinctly in the two large pieces, aptly named ’Juggler’ and ‘Spinning Plates’, in which two clunky, half-formed figures seem to reluctantly perform for the viewer in a Covent Garden-esque parade of poise before - and partly fading into - a hectic background.

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When someone close to you passes away, especially the head of the family, it’s not uncommon to feel like you have to take on part of them and their responsibilities, acting in ways that you or others think you should: also known as ‘bargaining’; the third stage of grief. This is exactly what the twenty- five year old aims to depict in ‘SHARDS & ALTER EGOS’: the messy balancing act of dealing with your own emotions and other people’s expectations. For better and for worse. These situations and emotions are personified as his “alter egos”, (Partyman, Paper Boy, Soma Kid, The Nightfly) and in the distorted portraits (‘I have done a couple bad things’, ‘Up 4 Air’, ‘Wa/orrier’), reminiscent of De Kooning, Basquiat or Picasso’s brutalised muses.

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The viewer is met with recurring images of winged creatures that express this desire to act freely, but they are often weighed down with the responsibility of the heavy clogged shoes (‘All My Friends’, ’Blindsided’) or fly with the vulnerability of melting or transparent wings (’Birdman’, ‘The Nightfly’). Opposing themes are common in Watson’s work and something he strives for, “As long as there’s some conflict going on in the painting - it might be a losing battle or one-sided in some more than others - but there has to be some kind of conflict in the image. Light vs Dark. Funny vs Tragic. Protagonist vs Antagonist. That’s where the drama is.”

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His paintings are thick with layered textures, often with the rudimentary figures drawn or hand- painted on the surface of them with bold, frenetic marks akin to the great abstract expressionists of last century like Twombly or Pollock. They are edited and reworked, building up heavy blueprints of drafts gone beforehand, seeming to visually express the transforming emotions of the grieving process; or stating ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’. The primitive, often childish cartoon- like characters and symbols of delicacy like the love heart and the butterfly become a visual expression of the cardinal emotions that define us when at our weakest or most vulnerable points, and seem to celebrate them honestly, championing human emotion and it’s limits. Inspired by a range of genres of music from Alex G and Radiohead to his Dad’s Neil Young and Kate Bush vinyls, his education as a filmmaker gives his work a cinematic feel; a captured moment with an emphasis on perception rather than accurate representation, “I’d rather [the paintings] were felt before they were understood. But they’re a collection of ideas and influences merged together to create something I, and hopefully everyone can relate to in some way. I’m just searching for that moment that I can say, “Oh yeah... I recognise that!”.”

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Watson includes a number of small works on paper, (the ‘Shards’), a series of which the sales money will be donated to Bowel Cancer Research UK. Benny is thrilled to announce that a curated selection of the works will continue to be solo exhibited at Shoreditch Modern Gallery from 21st March - 7th April. The show is dedicated to his Grandmother Mel Dyke and his Dad Peter Watson.