Veronica Bruce, Dan Giordan and Joe Baldwin: Material Syntax
@ Robert Bills Contemporary
222 N Desplaines St, Chicago, IL 60661
Opening Saturday, December 11th, from 5PM - 8PM
On view through Tuesday, January 4th
Material Syntax presents three artists with diverse yet overlapping interpretations of media relationships. From the traditional plastic art of painting to the new medium of digital photography, these artists employ their unique artistic methods to create images that represent the changing field of mixed media and reconsider traditional media limitations.
Veronica Bruce’s contemporary paintings examine traditional aspects of the medium of painting within an untraditional framework of every-day material aesthetics. Using a variety of found materials such as cardboard, plaster, hinges, screws, Styrofoam, and wood, Bruce constructs pieces that have a profound physical presence as well as a rich painterly technique. Featuring a range of image types from inkjet photos to gestural strokes allows Bruce to juxtapose material aesthetics in endless combinations that simultaneously reinforce and deconstruct media boundaries.
Dan Giordan crafts paintings with many carefully considered layers of material. As opposed to the more direct side-by-side juxtaposition of media that takes place in Bruce’s work, Giordan relies heavily on layering to create paintings that seem to take on a more hybrid media form. Within his paintings photographic and painterly visual syntax do not just coexist, they mingle on the surface and coalesce in depth to create diverse textures and visual planes. Each work becomes a conversation between the communicating visual entities.
Joe Baldwin interprets the theme of communication more literally, as he relies on technological filtering to construct images from digital material. His photographs radically reinterpret the concept of digital manipulation by using photographic data as a material as easily molded by the artist’s hand as paint or graphite.
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