Exhibition Details

Cardi Gallery is proud to present, Sehnsucht, the first-ever solo show in Britain dedicated to French artist Ben Vautier (b. Naples, 1935; lives and works in Nice). Displayed on the ground floor of the Grafton Street townhouse is a selection of paintings he created between 1975 and 2016. The show marks Ben’s return to Mayfair after sixty years of absence. In October 1962, invited by Daniel Spoerri to partake in the Festival of Misfits, for two weeks Ben took residence in a cage behind Gallery One’s shop window in North Audley Street, a living sculpture on display around the clock, surrounded by a maze of boldly painted texts on panels. London proved pivotal for the development of his practice: it was here that he first met George Maciunas, the father of newly formed Fluxus, and he soon became the “100% Fluxus man”, completely blurring the boundaries between art and life through irreverent performances, gigs, and bringing theatre into the streets.
Ben has been conceptually distilling his total art, total theatre and the performing of mundane actions into an art form that brings together art, life, and philosophy, through his tableaux-écriture. The thickly poured paint forming the letters in the artist’s distinctive cursive handwriting is set on often glossy, colourful monochrome backgrounds. These handwritten word slogans on a variety of supports which he still produces to this day are iconic bearers of often controversial messages laden with wit and irony. They are linguistic images dealing with a broad spectrum of issues that Ben centres back to the world's motor, ego: from self-reflection as an artist, through postmodernism, to ethnology and religion.
Reminiscent of the Japanese haiku, for their startling brevity and the deep feeling of wonder about the word they convey, Ben’s words are at once pungent and playful moments of enlightenment that set the viewer on a humorous journey of introspection.