NYAB Event - Ben Frost “The End of Innocence”

Ben Frost “The End of Innocence”

Krause Gallery

This event has ended.

Krause Gallery presents The End of Innocence, where Ben Frost will return to New York City for his solo exhibition at Krause Gallery.

Frost will be presenting new mixed media hand painted pieces along with his
infamous “packages” art for this exhibition presenting his own statement on
consumerism, socio-political atmospheres and corporate ideologies.
Ben Frost (born Brisbane, Australia) is a visual artist whose work seeks to
challenge contemporary norms and values of Western culture and society.
Frost’s visual work places common iconic images from advertising,
entertainment, and politics into startling juxtapositions that are often
confrontational and controversial.

In preparation for “The End of Innocence”, Frost has been working feverishly on
all new works for his first solo show at the gallery. The exhibition consists of
over 50 new works, using a diverse and sometimes perverse selection of found
boxes and packaging the artist has collected and painted fastidiously onto with
acrylics. Crying women painted onto Oxycodone, Methadone, Diazepam and
other pharmaceuticals reflect our desire and dependence on self-medication.
Children and cartoon characters frolic on shotgun and other bullet packages,
while Snow White and Family Guy are juxtaposed onto actual World War 2 Nazi
stamps.

“I’m looking specifically at the way Western society portrays itself - as if we are
all innocent participants in the chaos that’s going on in the world.” Frost says.
“There is a darker side to our involvement and it begins with our obsession with
consumption, and the ways in which we are spoon-fed our ideologies from
entertainment and the media. We idolize cartoon characters, pop pills like
theyre candy and all the while build up our own personal arsenals that our
children inevitably gain access to and enact their own distorted virtual realities.
It’s dystopic to suggest that none of us are really innocent and that we’re all
‘feeding the machine’ - but I think it’s something worthy of exploration.”
Ben Frost has been a practicing artist for the last 15 years and has exhibited
around the world including Saatchi Gallery, Stolen Space and No Walls in the
UK, Soze, Corey Helford and Guy Hepner in LA, The Institute of Modern Art in
Brisbane, Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney as well as the London Art
Fair and Scope Art fairs in Miami and New York. His work has been featured on
the BBC, Wall Street Journal, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and countless newspaper
and magazine articles.