"...YELLOW AND BLUE, THAT´S FOR YOU"

Benjamin Badock´s repertoire of motifs, which in the current
exhibition unfolds on large format prints and gouaches,
consists of diverse formal elements derived from multiple
contexts. They are based on casual observations of the artist
´s immediate surroundings, appearing as urban quotes,
stylized excerpts from the city scape, fleeting sketches and
compact typographic notations.

Fragments of a day-to-day culture are dissociated from a
formal and functional framework and transferred into
abstraction. Former references to objects from a material
world recede behind a free interpretation. Comparable with a
set of simple forms in a building set that are joined to yield
complex, imaginative structures, Badock´s creations are the
outcome of an ingenuous combination of single, reduced
elements. Whereas the featured prints reveal the regularity of
a systematically applied pattern, the gouaches appear as
playful, colorful improvisations.

For more than 10 years Badock has been imbuing traditional
printing techniques with an innovative and experimental
approach. He does not seek to just multiply or reproduce an
image, but rather to fully explore the painterly potential
involved in the process. In the succession of printing steps
superimpositions of color emerge, while slight deviations from
a mechanical precision result in a displacement of the design
and a gradual transition of hues. Badock also engages in the
use of unconventional materials. Leftovers from textile
production mark the starting point of his recent works, whose
overall ornamental conception can be traced back to the even
distribution of pieces of fabric like a careful arrangement of
templates.

During a scholarship in Vietnam in 2014, Badock visited
production sites of international textile companies. The
simultaneity of order and chaos encountered in the
sweatshops of Hanoi left a lasting impression on the artist.
Whereas the coveted products of a global industry are
carefully stacked on one side, the discarded remnants are left
lying on a heap on the side of the street. These worthless
fabric shreds are now used by Badock in the printing process.
He recovers and recycles scraps, which emerge as negative
forms when the pieces that comprise a garment are being cut
out. Only a very fine line, that is to say, a cut, separates a
positive from a negative shape, or, accordingly, a valuable
piece from its by-product. Here, the distinction between a
high-gloss product and a waste item also touches on the gap
between luxury and poverty, bringing into question different
notions of what is valuable. Badock´s visual examination of
these found shapes dissolves such distinctions, leveling items
of greater and less worth. Comparable to a picture puzzle,
shapes are organised in an alternating, non-hierarchic way,
so that a vivid interplay of pictorial parts ensues, causing
certain shapes to become foregrounded and others to retreat
to the back. Badock´s adept deployment of vibrant color
contrasts and complementary segments induces a dynamic
effect, in which the image becomes ambiguous and, in the
face of an aesthetic redefinition, former criteria of valuation
are rendered invalid.

BENJAMIN BADOCK was born 1974 in Chemnitz (former Karl-
Marx-City). He began studying Architecture at the
Brandenburgische Technische Universität in Cottbus, before
dedicating himself to Fine Arts at the Hochschule für Bildende
Künste in Braunschweig from 2001 until 2009, which he
concluded as a master student of Olaf Christopher Jenssen.
Badock received numerous prizes, grants and awards. 2017
he was elected by the Villa-Massimo-Jury for a sholarship at
the Cité International des Arts in Paris. 2016 he was
nominated for the Queen Sonja Print Award in Oslo, Norway.
2014 Badock received the Sprengel Prize for Fine Art,
donated by the Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung 2014 in
Hannover. Works by Benjamin Badock are represented in
renowned public and private collections, among these being:
Sprengel Museum Hannover, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen
Dresden, Kunstsammlung Deutsche Bundesbank, Daimler
Kunstsammlung, Kunstmuseum Spendhaus Reutlingen,
Kunsthalle Göppingen und Städtische Galerie Delmenhorst.
Benjamin Badock lives and works in Leipzig, Germany.