Kristin Baker "Illume-Mine"
The Suzanne Geiss Company
This event has ended.
ILLUME-MINE, an exhibition of new work by Kristin Baker, investigates the transformative effects of light, expanded expectations of the painted medium, and the artist’s unique process. An intensified engagement with notions of scale and the physicality of process replaces the dynamic moments of narrative content - racing cars and catastrophic landscapes - that have pulsed through Baker’s acrylic palimpsests. Luminance, color, and material become the predominant institute as Baker engages her interest in the alchemy of paint. Through a dual-action of mining and superimposing, Baker reiterates planar flatness while introducing a third dimension that references many genres but is hindered by none.
Light and shadow, opacity and translucency, the mechanical and the organic collide in works like Relative Vignette. Thick white lines meet diaphanous black swathes and embedded edges pass through various atmospheric densities. We could be visualizing the moment when a hot burst of air hits an icy surface, or when day shifts into night. The vignette, however, doesn’t seem to matter as it is merely the consequence of the interplay between process, color, and material. The Other Side of Non-Actual Potholing visualizes physical dichotomies of unearthing and rubbing with the inclusion of a handprint. The defined form pushes from behind abstraction, bringing to light both human implication-continued on reverse-and the surface’s own anthropomorphic energies. Spectrums of transparency build as paint unmasks its presence through the guise of other mediums.
As shades of photography, printmaking, and other two-dimensional mediums graft and refract, Baker’s diverse acrylic idiom is revealed. The resultant spatial and chromatic tensions disseminate speed and time, further defying pictorial space. These experiental effects are enhanced through an exploration of miniature to monumental scale, physicalized in the shift from 12 by 10 inch to 120 by 80 inch paintings. Playing off an assemblage of homages (Futurism, Fauvism, Informalism, Abstract Expressionism), Baker creates ‘everywhere’ paintings - their sources and luminous volumes are ambiguous, capricious, and in constant flux.
Kristin Baker was born in Stamford, CT. She now lives and works in New York City. After receiving a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University in Boston, she went on to receive a MFA in painting from Yale University. Recently, her work was presented in solo exhibitions at The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the National Art Center of Tokyo.
Media
Schedule
from May 04, 2012 to June 23, 2012
Opening Reception on 2012-05-04 from 18:00 to 20:00