Brian Dailey “Polytropos”

Brian Dailey “Polytropos”

Baahng Gallery

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Baahng Gallery presents representation of Brian Dailey and the gallery will present his first solo exhibition, Polytropos, featuring selected works from 2010 to 2018, and debuting his most recent monumental project WORDS to New York audience, an expansive global video engaging with issues of language and identity under globalization.

Based in Washington D.C., Brian Dailey, working in a range of media including photography, film, installations, and painting, draws on his unconventional evolution as an artist and reflects pressing concerns of our times. His conceptual and performance based art expands the parameters in which he works, defying easy categorization. Brian Dailey embodies multiple practices that offer a fluid and rigorous way of thinking and creating.

Perhaps no word better characterizes Dailey than polytropos, the first adjective Homer applies to Odysseus in The Odyssey. Translated from the Greek as well traveled, much wandering, and, in a more metaphorical sense, as the man of many twists and turns, polytropos suitably describes Dailey’s life journey and its many peregrinations. After Otis Art Institute (MFA, 1975), Dailey participated in the pioneering creative experimentation defining the prolific artistic milieu in California in this era. His early career launched him on a path that—before bringing him full circle back to his roots as an artist—took him through a twenty-year interlude working on arms control and international security. These unusual experiences, which he approached with the same curiosity that has driven his art, provide a fertile source of inspiration in his idiosyncratic creative practice.

The exhibition includes: Lamentations, meditative and provocative in two and three dimensional works, a pioneering project that manifests a novel aesthetics of nuclear iconography in post-Cold War; Radiant and intricate digital graphite drawings, Riddles, render compelling multifaceted meanings; Elegant and vibrant autobiographical 14 Stations at the Crossroads revisit key moments in the artist’s life journey. Also, on view, is the dynamic mosaic of photographic portraits from America in Color project, a color-coded time capsule of the myriad faces of the U.S. populace, situated literally and symbolically against a backdrop of the contemporary political landscape.

Brian Dailey has had solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, New York, Washington, D.C., and Bulgaria, and participated in a number of group shows in the United States, Europe, and Russia. His most recent museum exhibition, WORDS, was held at Katzen Arts Center, American University Museum in Washington D.C. in 2018, and his mid-career retrospective took place at Bulgaria’s National Art Gallery in Sofia in 2014. The evocative video Jikai –which will be on view at the gallery—was screened on multiple synchronized monitors in New York City in February, 2014, as the featured video in the Times Square Midnight Moment series; a project of ART PRODUCTION FUND.

Media

• Installation
• Video installation

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