CAN GALLERY PRESENTS ROGER BALLEN ‘SPIRITS AND SPACES’

Seeing Ballen’s work in CAN Gallery’s bunker feels like being swallowed by his
own nightmare; a descent into a Dantesque underworld where shadow and
absurdity twist together.
Both a visual revelation and a milestone in his artistic evolution, Spirits and Spaces
captures Ballen’s uncanny universe, where animals, sculptural constructions, and
Art Brut-inspired drawings coexist, while human presence is reduced to shadowy
forms or fragmented bodies.
The new color photographs glow with unsettling light, while the inverted figures of
Hungry Ghosts emerge like echoes from the unconscious, filling the claustrophobic
space with tension and hypnotic energy.
Shown in parallel with his retrospective at the Benaki Museum, this exhibition feels
like the artist’s completed underworld, and a greater celebration of his genius.