photographs of tiny, colourful paintings B.W. aka the Chewing Gum Man made on the stains of spat out chewing gum flattened by walking over it on the sidewalks of London streets, accompanied by photographs of the people he made them for, with an introduction by Ludovic Renaud, “Ben Wilson is a catalyst, attuned to the world around him. Through his small paintings, he has redefined the limits of the city, and the relationship each of us has with the notion of urban life. His work is situated beyond the framework of street art, and of art in general. It questions the existing fracture between the city and its population. His chewing gums, far from being trivial, are on the contrary existential in nature. They force us to rethink the question of the people as seen through the prism of city-states. His sincere gesture is not borne by anger or despair, but by transcendence, love, tolerance, and the uniqueness of each individual aware of being only a part of a whole. His humanism is distinctive, and even jarring. Ben Wilson shows us the way towards a possible world where everyone has a place without being forced to struggle for it”, soft cover, 84 pages, 18 x 18 cm, Amsterdam 2017
