STEVEN BARIS
DYS/EQUILIBRIA
MARCH 11 - APRIL 23, 2022
MEET THE ARTIST
Friday, March 11 | 5 - 7:30 PM
Pentimenti Gallery welcomes spring with a solo exhibition by Steven Baris. The gallery is excited to host Steven Baris again and feature his newest work.
Dys/Equilibria is comprised of three related series of Baris’s work. The exhibition features paintings and sculptures from his Toppling series, works on mylar from his Never the Same Space Twice series, and multi-paneled paintings from his Dys/Junctures series. Each body of work visualizes transformation and discontinuity via an essential, immediate symbolic language of disconnection.
The Toppling work constitutes the artist’s investigation of the public, private, and institutional disruptions and uncertainties that have colored the past several years. Pivoting from examining spatial and transitional liminality, to the societal disequilibrium that has resulted from unprecedented political challenges and the changing ecology of our planet, Baris applies his signature style to configure a new lexicon of disruption. In the newest large-scale oil paintings and acrylic/oil paintings on plexiglass, the black silhouettes of structures break and tip, threatening to crumble out of the anxious, vibrational haze of the picture plane.
Baris’s Never the Same Space Twice works in oil on mylar present a visual metaphor for detour and an upending of flow. The energetic works read like route maps or graphed data. Bold, colorful lines wind across the image, disappearing and reappearing while entangling and circumnavigating each other.
The Dys/Junctures paintings entirely break from the single-paneled picture plane of the other paintings and the works on mylar. These multi-panel oil and acrylic paintings allow the linework to dictate its own environment; the breaks in the content catalyze breaks in the form of the surface itself, and the lines seem to pull the surface with them in a multitude of directions.
Ongoing processes of transformation form the conceptual core of Baris’s work across media. While the different series of work respond to different aspects of change and disruption, the element of metamorphosis is distilled in every piece. The clarity and intentionality of the mark making give Baris’s abstractions a distinct quality of urgency, and compel the viewer to read and heed the message.
Steven Baris (b. 1953, Aberdeen, WA) received his MFA from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, PA. He studied at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, and Instituto Allende, San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. Baris has exhibited widely in the US and internationally, in such museums and institutions as: National Museum, Lublin, Poland; Wilhelm Morgner Museum, Soest, Germany; Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA; Institute of Visual Arts in Kielce, Poland; Museum St. Wendel, Germany; Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Penzance, UK; The Print Center, Philadelphia, PA; Ely Center of Contemporary Art, New Haven, CT; Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Wilmington, DE; Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit, NJ; Atelierhof Kreuzberg, Berlin, Germany; INTERNATIONAL BIENNIAL OF NON-OBJECTIVE ART, Pont de Claix, France; Kunstlerhaus Dosenfabrik, Hamburg, Germany; Carnegie Mellon University Art Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA; University of Texas at Dallas, Dallas, TX; The Drawing Center, New York, NY, and more.
His work is included in numerous corporate and private collections across North America, Europe, and Australia, as well as the museum collections of National Museum, Lublin, Poland, and Copelouzos Museum, Athens, Greece.
For all inquiries, please contact us at mail@pentimenti.com or +1 215.625.9990.