In the 1970s Ben Willikens works with a hard, real view of the world of things, which takes on a supra-real character through exaggerated close-up vision and precision combined with fictitious combinations of things and space. He transforms spatial compositional principles of the High Renaissance and elements of the New Objectivity. The personal, individual gesture of the hand is avoided. The objects are taken from the ambience of institutions. A favorite, recurring motif is the stretcher.
The rooms of Ben Willikens are not inhabited, they are not furnished. The lines of perspective, which can be calculated according to rational laws, flood into infinity and the invisible, intangible, incalculable light becomes form. Space transcends into flowing time, light and shadow transform into visible form. When approaching the picture, however, the forms again become color appearances on the gray scale and pencil lines.