Flyovers, water towers, sewage tunnels and other urban sites with equivocal forms provide a profuse, proliferating reality for Ben Nathan’s paintings. For us, they bear no specific signification and sometimes have a negative image. Reminding us of pollution, death, dirt, shadow, emptiness and putrefaction. However, to Ben they are related to life itself, to creation and are his main tools for his pictorial subject matter. To him, they indicate man’s presence and reflect past and present human technologies. London urbanscapes are frozen in his paintings in a moment of their movement in the cycle of the City’s development.

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It is my reaction to what I see around me, through constantly walking and cycling, which provides me with the stimulus, the motivation and the subject matter for my practice. I drift through the city and record my observations.

Debord describes the dérive (drift) as ‘A technique of transient passage through various ambiances.’[1]On a dérive one or more persons, during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and encounters they find.

Ben Nathan 2012.

[1] Guy Debord, ‘Theory of the Dérive’, in Andreotti Libero and Costa Xavier (eds.), Theory of the Dérive and other situationist writings on the city