Cake
Ben Raz
7 February - 7 March 2026
‘Abjection is sinister, scheming, and shady: a terror that dissembles, a hatred that smiles, a passion that uses the body for barter instead of inflaming it, a debtor who sells you up, a friend who stabs you. . .’ - Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror.
Using the logic of the very spectacle it mocks, many of the paintings in Cake inundate the viewer with a cacophony of stories in image, akin to a Wimmelbild.* We assume the position of the illiterate viewer, the image of teeming multitudes inviting an over-curiosity rather than stories of interpersonal appreciation. In Tavern and Interior, large residential buildings compartmentalise alienated scenes across the two paintings allowing us to become complicit as voyeurs looking at mundanity creep over a well-dressed woman preparing her Christmas tree beneath a picture of a fighter jet; a synecdoche for military power of past, current and future. Elsewhere a man smiles at us, fuse in hand, above another vignette in a window below exhibiting a crossroads with an over-elaborate sundae on its sill. A figure walks towards us donning a swastika while another stares, pigeons in hand, at a family scene at the table through the ground window. The abject is other people, a view into their inner lives, what they do with their spare time and what is on their screens.
Something or someone consistently lurks; there is a wickedness alongside seductive surfaces. Corruption is embraced knowingly with a futile attitude. Abundance becomes a veil, its richness dulling attention rather than sharpening it. Observing a surrender to over-indulgence in contemporary culture, Raz explodes the tension between attraction and repulsion, choosing cake as a form of moreish gluttony aligned with a vulgar, saturated lived experience. Corkscrew leans into a distracted viewing; as we stare at the painting we are becoming sleepy, joining Raz's world. The hypnotic spiral is background while we flit across the various scenes in the painting.
As opposed to searching through the busied scenes to find something clandestine in reach of a resolution, the search elicits a fog that becomes more opaque with each interaction with the multiple narratives. Presenting an array of disparate scenes encourages playful looking, as the facetious micro-stories oscillate between the abject and the curious. Through their ambiguity, many of the paintings are characterised by their lack of clarity; Raz is interested in how an image can simultaneously convey and withhold information. Moments of danger, apathy, mischief and surprise are juxtaposed, contributing to a visual language that embraces contradiction and examines the complexity of human behaviour.
* A Wimmelbild means in German literally a "teeming picture.” Think wordless picture books often with hidden narratives such as Richard Scarry. Peter Breughel the elder and Hieronymous Bosch are often credited as the proto Wimmelbild-ers.
Ben Raz’s paintings synthesise varied interests, experiences, observations, and imaginings. More specifically, they are created with regard to themes of desire, the clandestine, and modern decadence. These ideas are reinforced by the coalescence of disparate images and information. Through their ambiguity, many of the paintings are characterised by their lack of clarity; Raz is interested in how an image can simultaneously convey and withhold information.
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Prices on Application. Please email sam@boldinggallery.com or esme@boldinggallery.com if interested.