Benjamin Irritant

Description

For Benjamin Irritant, the field of play where he finds his means of visual expression is clearly outlined: graphic collage and printed paper. The London artist, who has also experimented with skull motifs, alphabet pasta and stencil graffiti, makes biggest use of the symbols of a white rabbit (“Follow!”) and a tie-wearing figure with a TV head (“Consume!”) – both are well-known figures of protest graphics. These are flanked by slogans in headline style: “Buy the illusion”, “Forget you ever saw me”.
Sometimes, he uses his own posters like a construction kit, combining them to create collaged compositions. In any event, the desired effect is presaged by the artist’s own name. Ironically, the provocative, often anti-capitalist posters are also available as art prints. But who ever claimed there was a right life in the wrong one? Yet there certainly is one in the tradition of John Heartfield and Barbara Kruger.
And so it is that Benjamin Irritant mixes paste and wallpapers his surroundings – so that more collages can emerge from collages.

Robert Kaltenhäuser