Benjamin Levy: Keeping Up With The Corbies
4th April, 2025 – 8th May, 2025
LBF Contemporary
13 Tottenham Mews
London
W1T 4AQ
In his latest exhibition at LBF, Keeping Up With The Corbies, the painter Benjamin Levy turns his eye to the rituals of want and the quiet toll of appearances. The show, composed of ten new works, takes the pulse of modern Britain, where social standing is as much about how one looks as where one stands.
Levy, who lives and works in London, paints with precision and purpose. His large diptychs—often matched by colour, line or gesture—draw attention to the ways we look: at things, at each other, at ourselves. They carry the feel of documentary, but the mood is unmistakably personal. These are not moral lessons so much as acts of close observation.
Oil on canvas
146 x 216 cm
57.5 x 85 in
The works move between private interiors and the glow of digital screens, between the fleeting promise of luxury goods and the ache that underlies the chase. Levy does not paint satire; his subjects are not mocked. Instead, they are rendered with a kind of still empathy. You sense what they want, and perhaps, what they’re missing.
There are echoes here of James Rosenquist, who once made the billboard his canvas. Levy pulls from a different feed—social media, targeted ads, the ambient noise of online life—but the impulse is similar: to hold up a mirror, and ask what we see.
What makes the work land, though, is not the commentary. It’s the atmosphere. The closeness of friends. The distance between lovers. The uneasy quiet that settles after the performance ends. Levy shows us a world in pursuit of more, and asks, gently, what’s been left behind.
Oil paint and wax on birch wood panel
30 x 21 cm
12 x 8 in
About Benjamin Levy
Benjamin Levy (b. 1982, London) is a painter from North London. His work centres on class, aspiration, and the quieter tensions of working life in modern Britain. Through carefully observed, often intimate paintings, he reflects on the pressures of social mobility and the emotional weight carried by those trying to move up.
Levy’s route to painting was shaped more by life than by art school. After completing a foundation course at Barnet College, he briefly studied Illustration at Middlesex University before leaving. “Life became a bit more serious,” he has said. With rent to cover, he took whatever work came—gas engineer, carpet fitter, loft converter, builder’s labourer, Sainsbury’s checkout. All the while, he kept drawing, painting when he could.
Oil on canvas
146 x 192 cm
57.5 x 75.5 in
In his early thirties, worn down by the toll of physical work, he made the decision to focus on painting full-time. His background remains central to the work—less subject than soil.
Recent solo shows include The Milky Bar Kid Was Strong and Tough at The Artist Room, London (2023), and Icons of War at Castle Fitzjohns Gallery, shown at Scope Art Fair, Miami (2019).
Benjamin Levy: Keeping Up With The Corbies opens on the 4th of April, 2025 until the 8th of May, 2025 at LBF Contemporary
©2025 LBF
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