EXHIBITION IMAGES | PRESS RELEASE | ARTIST PAGE: BALDRIDGE | GRAF
September 10 – October 3rd, 2011
Opening reception for the artist: Saturday, September 10th, 6-9pm
Gallery hours: Thursday – Monday, 11 – 7pm
Halsey Mckay Gallery is pleased to present its fifth show of the season. This two-person exhibition includes a window installation and works on paper by Glen Baldridge alongside new photo-based works by Bryan Graf. The exhibition will be on view from September 10 through October 3rd. Both artists use the natural environment as starting point to subvert our expectations of landscape imagery. Baldridge and Graf exploit the metaphorical potential of the natural environment with curious discovery and sardonic wit.
Included in this exhibition is a selection of never before seen polaroids, c-prints and assemblage from Graf’s oeuvre. By using found objects, low-fi processes and an experimental approach to materials, Graf’s photographs embrace the plural nature of interpretation and reflect upon the materiality of time. Accumulation plays an important role in Graf’s imagery, whether it is assemblage from found materials in his darkroom or a photograph of discarded analog tape reel, Graf’s wanderings through the day to day inform his choices. By employing controlled chance with photographic materials and favoring a diverse working method, Graf allows different styles of image making to intersect and overlap.
Likewise, Baldridge’s practice spans approaches and experiments in drawing, printmaking, photography, installation and sculpture. At Halsey Mckay a vinyl adhered sunset fills the gallery’s storefront giving the effect of a stained glass window at dusk. Layered inkjet prints of a blurred canopy of trees lend inebriated reference to Notre Dame de Paris in the artists’ Rose Window grouping. In other works this forest is burned or razed in graphite. The glass-flocked watercolor paper of Accident appears as both spider web and head-smashed windshield depending on perception. Again displaying a mandala shape resulting from consumed spirits rather than spirituality.
Glen Baldridge’s work is in numerous public and private collections in the United States and abroad, including the Museum of Modern Art, the New York Public Library, The RISD Museum, Jundt Art Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, his recent solo exhibitions have been at Klaus Von Nichtsaggend, NY and Guerrero Gallery, SF. Baldridge lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Bryan Graf received his M.F.A. from Yale University in 2008 and his B.F.A from the Art Institute of Boston in 2005. Recently he has held solo exhibitions at Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York, NY and Galleri Kleerup in Stockholm. His work has appeared in the New York Times op-ed column and Blindspot Magazine. He lives and works in Portland, Maine.