The constant fight Ben finds himself in is between an autonomous, art-intrinsic practice and a politically engaged one. He deconstructs images attributed to socio-political content with interventions that gradually strip them of these features. Based on a previous series of paintings in which video documents from primarely the Russia-Ukraine conflict were abstracted, these works further widen the distance between the work and its source.
In his latest works, he takes earlier abstracted paintings, cuts them into overlapping stripes digitally, and paints them again as if looking through corrugated glass. The original marks are repeated without being changed, and the distance between source and painting increases, begging the question of when an image removes itself from its origin and becomes autonomous. Various images and texts are transferred and silkscreened into the work; some are the reference image of the initial painting, some relate to music, some are recognisable, others not, blurring the lines between them.