"We started off painting trains and getting arrested—none of this was meant to happen," says London-born, San Francisco–based Ben Eine of his humble beginnings in street art. Eine’s star rose significantly in 2010, however, after one of his works came into the possession of the most powerful man on the planet. In the summer of that year, Eine got a call from 10 Downing Street, following a recommendation from handbag designer Anya Hindmarch to her good friend Samantha Cameron, wife of British prime minister David Cameron. The piece Eine sent them—a word painting that spelled out “Twenty First Century City” in cascading multicolor letters on a black canvas—turned into perhaps the most publicized gift ever given to President Barack Obama. A new collection of these word paintings, “Heartfelt,” is now on view at the Judith Charles Gallery in New York.
In the past four years Eine’s word-based pieces have sold out in shows from London to Los Angeles, where he just launched a new printmaking operation, Elephants & Castles, which made the limited-edition works in his newest exhibition. Teeming with rainbow-hued number sets, alphabets, and charged words (“Magically,” “Agonising,” “Emergency,” “Imperfect,” “Fantastic”) and phrases ("Today was a good day," "The new entertainment," "This is as good as it gets”), the spray-painted works feature hypnotically detailed cast-iron letters built up over diagonally lined backgrounds.
For the works at Judith Charles, the artist culled many of his subjects from lists of Google searches for nine-letter words, and he thrives on finding nouns, adjectives, and phrases that can imply different meanings. “‘Heartfelt’ was a word I hadn’t written before, and it just conjures up something warm. ‘Outspoken’ is a word I've used on quite a few canvases. People like these words; they seem to read something that’s different than why I painted them.”
In addition to the gallery show, Eine made a legal return to the streets of New York to paint “It's Entertainment.ish” on some scaffolding (across from the Soho Grand Hotel) and “Amaze” along a roughly 120 foot-long, 20-foot high wall at Rikers Island jail complex. In other words, this outlaw has come full circle.
Through March 16 at Judith Charles Gallery, New York; judithcharlesgallery.com
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