Artist: Benjamin Moss // Apocalypse Tattoo Berlin
Exhibition: Skull Love
Size: 90 x 60 x 1.6 cm – Acrylic on canvas.
Artists Statement //
Benjamin Moss has spent the better part of the past 24 years doing what he loves most. Honing his skills in his primary medium, tattooing both realistic and darker images on human skin. Originally from Detroit, USA, Benjamin moved to Seattle and opened Apocalypse Tattoo in 2000. Opening the studio gave him the freedom to start traveling, working consistently at various tattoo conventions and tattoo studios around the world. With these opportunities, Benjamin was fortunate enough to be able work with and study under some of the greatest tattoo masters of the modern era extensively, to develop his style and technique. Throughout his travels Benjamin has both taken and given seminars in the art of tattooing to contribute to the growth of the art form as a whole. As well as having been featured in interviews in dozens of tattoo books and magazines around the world, including publications from every inhabited continent. While on the road, Benjamin found himself in Europe more and more often until he finally relocated himself and Apocalypse Tattoo to their current home here in Berlin, Germany.
Benjamin draws inspiration from the beauty in the darker sides of both nature and the forms that express them.Just as a human face has expression, so do seemingly inanimate shapes and objects. As an artist, Benjamin has spent years exploring how varying formulas create a different impact on the viewer while viewing the same object. Simply by adjusting position, lighting, color scheme, or slightly altering lines or proportions, the same subject can induce very different feelings on the viewer depending on how it is presented. For Benjamin this is the ultimate goal of the artist. Using a visual language to communicate something more intuitive than that which needs explanation. To inspire the viewer to explore their relationship with darker imagery, until it surpasses any initial response of fear and becomes one of taking pleasure in it. In this way Benjamin uses the platform of art to unite with and savor the darker sides of our nature, which might otherwise manifest in more dangerous or unhealthy forms of expression.
Then came the unfortunate events in 2020, COVID-19, and the global pandemic. With tattooing and traveling brought to a halt, Benjamin was again inspired to pick up other artistic mediums from his fine art background. It was in this stillness that he felt the freedom to continue exploring the similar themes that he enjoys in tattooing, although from a technically much different approach. With tattooing, Benjamin executes realism and fine detail in a very controlled and unforgiving medium, with paint his methods are quite the opposite. In both mediums, the preparation work for the design is a crucial part of the process. Benjamin only uses real human skulls for reference, for all of his pieces. Next he positions, lights, and photographs them, eventually putting them into the computer to digitally enhance when necessary. Once the reference material conveys the appropriate feeling, he moves on to the more hands on phase. Which in this series is acrylic paint and mixed medium, and the freedom of not using any form of stencil. Here Benjamin can enjoy a two way process of adding and subtracting that he was unaccustomed to in tattooing. Applying more rough and dissolved strokes, yet guided through intently strategized formulas until they re-coagulate into a form of captivating expression. Also adding the third dimension of texture and relief.