Born in New York in 1950, Roger Ballen has developed one of the most distinctive visual languages in contemporary art, merging photography with drawing, film, sculpture and installation. After years of travelling, Ballen settled in South Africa in the 1980s, where he developed his distinctive visual language and transformed photography into a medium that reveals what he calls the “black core” of the mind.
Influenced by Henri Cartier-Bresson and André Kertész, Ballen combines formal precision and timing with a search for profound, often ambiguous realities.
Deeply rooted in art brut and surrealism, his work reflects both movements’ fascination with the unfiltered and the unconscious. In his interiors, line drawings, found objects, animals, and human traces merge into cohesive disquieting spaces. The Ballenesque image transforms disorder into formal coherence while questioning whether chaos or order defines the human condition. This tension gives his work its distinctive intensity — enigmatic, bizarre and deeply human.
Ballen’s works are shown in major collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou, and the Stedelijk Museum.
In 2025, museum gugging presents roger ballen.! drawing meets photography, focusing on the interplay of drawing and photography and the ongoing evolution of the ballenesque image.
