Bakersfield Museum of Art Fall Exhibitions
September 13, 2012 – November 25, 2012
Out of Print: Altered Books
Out of Print will focus on the book as a sculptural object. The exhibit will feature 10 contemporary artists who have deconstructed and reconfigured the book into something new. Through folding, carving, photographing, slicing, warping, dissecting and stacking, books are transformed from vessels of text and into beautiful abstract forms.
The pieces in this exhibition explore new and unexpected layers of meaning that go beyond the book as a source of information, offering a fresh examination of the role of the book in an increasingly digital-oriented world.
Participating Artists:Doug Beube, Alex Queral, Jacqueline Rush Lee, Mike Stilkey, Jim Rosenau, Guy Laramée, Cara Barer, Robert The, Brian Dettmer and Mary Ellen Bartley.
Featured Image: Jacqueline Rush Lee, Anthologia, 2008, altered book
Christopher Stott: New Realism
Christopher Stott is a contemporary realist artist whose oil paintings reveal a clean, simple, yet vivid compositional style. He paints vintage clocks, cameras, typewriters, telephones, fans and books, highlighting the basic shapes and forms of his subject matter.
Stott’s canvases employ neutral background tones and emphasize the light that falls across the compositions. This treatment elevates his subjects to an almost iconic status, making the ordinary a little more extraordinary. His work is approachable on multiple levels and has its finger firmly on the pulse of contemporary representational painting.
Christopher Stott resides in a small but beautiful city on the Canadian prairies and is currently represented by Elliott Fouts Gallery in Northern California and George Billis Gallery in Los Angeles and New York.
Photo: Light Reading by Christopher Stott.
Paul Strand: The Mexican Portfolio
Paul Strand is one of the towering figures of American 20th century photography. His work is typified by great richness and sensuousness of surface detail, making him one of the major forces of photographic modernism. One of his most culturally significant works, the Mexican portfolio, lies in the intersection of his photographic and cinematic interest. Consisting of twenty images depicting the landscapes, people, architecture and religious objects he encountered in Mexico in the early 1930 s, the Portfolio and its specific sequencing reveals Strand’s attempt to create a film-like narrative with photographic stills.
The Portfolio images are unrelievedly and provide powerful visuals adjectives attached to strong compositional elements. Strand does not patronize his subjects or ask that we do. His photographs are instead a subversive alternative to the studio portrait of glamour and power and reflect his interest in using the camera as a tool for social reform. As a result, The Mexican Portfolio, 70 years old, seems like a painfully telling mirror that reflects out contemporary predilections.