Aleph Contemporary

Ben Street: Art, History, and the Aesthetics of Enchantment

Ben Street is a highly influential voice in contemporary art criticism and education, distinguished by his ability to articulate complex theoretical concepts in a clear, accessible manner. As an established art historian, critic, and frequent lecturer at major institutions—including the National Gallery, Tate, and Christie’s Education—Street consistently bridges the gap between historical precedent and current practice, making him an invaluable contributor to Aleph Contemporary's critical dialogue.

Street’s writing is marked by a refusal of easy binaries and a dedication to viewing painting as an unruly, hybrid event that is "always first and foremost of the world we share."

Challenging Abstraction at Aleph Contemporary

Street’s contributions to Aleph Contemporary exemplify his critical approach, particularly his willingness to re-examine fundamental categories of art.

His most extensive essay for the gallery, The Aesthetics of Enchantment in Abstract Art (2022), directly challenged the persistent modern dichotomy between abstract and figurative art. Street argued that the paintings in the exhibition should be viewed as "uniquely impure and hybrid events," happily mingling geometric flatness with real-world complexity. For Street, the works are decidedly physical and of the world; if they possess a "metaphysics," it is one that arises through a "bodily experienced" encounter.

In this text, he reframed abstraction not as a European invention of the last century, but as an ancient mode of art, linking the contemporary artists on display to a rich and diverse history that includes:

• Process and Space: He analysed how artists like Laurence Noga, Nina Dolan, and Mark Wright construct and frame space through different forms of material performance—from Noga's "jolting, halting visual effect" of collage to Dolan's internal, geological layering.

• Time and Memory: He focused on how process enacts "human time." For Rebecca Meanley, the act of "unpainting" makes the history of the work's creation a visual, spatial experience. For Henry Ward, reworking older paintings builds a tension between moments in time, making the studio a site of both action and self-reflection.