Benjamin Pritchard
WAYFARER

BENJAMIN PRITCHARD
WAYFARER

October 3rd, 2018 — October 28th, 2018
Opening Reception: Wednesday, October 3rd, 7pm-9pm

131 Chrystie Street, New York, NY 10002

SFA Projects is proud to present Wayfarer, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Benjamin Pritchard, opening on October 3, 2018 and on view through October 28th, 2018.

Benjamin Pritchard "Fire" (2018, oil on panel, 20" x 20")
Benjamin Pritchard “Fire” (2018, oil on panel, 20″ x 20″)

Ben Pritchard’s paintings are incomplete. From the artist’s point of view, the impulse to make something, that essential human need, far outweighs the importance any material object can have. Ben Pritchard honors this by taking a strictly provisional fancy to the things he makes so that those paintings that slip through and find their way to walls outside his studio do so more out of happenstance than from the artist’s declaration of their being finished

This is not to say that his method is unintentional. On the contrary. Like Frank Auerbach of England, where Pritchard himself once studied at the Royal Academy, incompleteness is built into the familiar forms that comprise his lexicon. Where Auerbach uses the portrait, Pritchard uses archetypal geometry. In both cases, the forms are made to submit to the nature of the paint itself. In Pritchard’s case, when a balance is struck, a painting occurs. As to the need of the painting itself to remain in its form, this is left to life to decide. The painter’s job is done.

— Ben La Rocco 2018

Benjamin Pritchard was born and raised in Detroit Michigan. He attended the New York Studio School and the Royal Academy of Arts, London. After graduation in 2009, and spending a few years based in Southwark, London, he relocated back to Brooklyn in 2011 where he has continued living and developing a painting language based upon an inquiry into the self and the world. Pritchard has exhibited extensively internationally and throughout the United States.