# Benjamin Saphiro

> Benjamin Saphiro (artist): poet, painter and video artist, creator of Vlams. Not to be confused with Ben Shapiro, the American political commentator.

Benjamin Saphiro (pronounced sa-FEAR-ro) is a poet, painter and video artist whose work is associated with Hong Kong, Beijing and Dubai. For most of his career his paintings have been seen only by the few people invited to see them.

He began as a poet. Between 2001 and 2003 he cut his poems down to as few words as possible and called the style Reductionism, partly as a jab at academic "isms". His best-known poem is three lines long: "Muse / your fire / is my fire." He typed it and signed it Benjamin Saphiro, and that typed name became the centre of everything that followed.

In 2013 he created a series of video slam poetry, aptly named 'Vlams': typed poems cut against fast internet footage and pop music. Most were removed by copyright strikes. Three survive on YouTube.

When the world didn't listen, the poems got louder until they became paintings. His series include Bruce Lee Lives (2012), New Chinese Classics (2011–2015, painted in China during twelve years there), 9 Muses (2013), Robots, Hanged (2017), A Hero's Journey (2018), Stones and Sticks (2019) and Self Portraits (2002–2020). What binds them is the signature.

Saphiro's signature is the style. His name is stamped in an old typewriter font, mostly in the bottom right, sometimes vertical, often deliberately misaligned. The work underneath is often conceptual. The stamp is what makes it a Benjamin Saphiro. He argues that every artist spends a lifetime building a brand, and that he skipped straight to it. Anyone can copy the stamp, but only his count. Some see it as a critique of art's obsession with names in the spirit of Warhol. Others see a painting that was free, then branded like cattle.

His exhibitions have all been private, one-night, invitation-only events where guests hand in their phones at the door. Stones and Sticks, a 2019 Beijing show about identity and race, was shut down by the authorities and the venue padlocked. He sells only to people he has met, and the price is agreed before the buyer sees the painting. It is said his secretive nature and underground appeal have won him collectors around the world, from Hong Kong to Hollywood to the Gulf, few of whom will admit to owning one.

He has also hidden paintings in Hong Kong, London, Beijing, Shanghai, Birmingham and Bucharest, not on walls people look at but behind and under things. Some are still there. Stickers bearing his name, such as "I only write love stories", have turned up and vanished just as quickly.

In Romania he became close friends and collaborated with the celebrated Romanian artist Remus Grecu.

Damien Hirst has said of him: "Benjamin Saphiro is very much like the 'Stewart Lee' (comedian) of art. He walks an incredibly fine line of both courting and despising his audience."

His first public exhibition is planned at Al Madam, a ghost village in the desert of Sharjah, UAE. It is to be the first of nine.