All This I Give to You: Andrew Baron

September 23 – December 3, 2022

 

All This I Give To You showcases over 60 paintings by New Jersey-based painter Andrew Baron. The exhibition features an assortment of works that range from ten by eight inches to six foot tall compositions that embody the artist’s unfettered freedom to navigate both non-objective and representational modes of painting. Baron states that these paintings are “a result of my self-conscious effort to move away from notions of a coherent body of work and the cultivation of an easily identifiable style; an effort to allow more and exclude less in respect to modes of representation, paint application, and conceptual thrust.”  

In the exhibition, solely abstract compositions share space with those that depict the figure, landscape, and elements from the built environment. Central to the artist’s process is exploring the material quality of paint and the rich and varied surfaces achievable through the medium. Baron’s palette runs from moody chromatic grays to heavily-saturated colors of vivid yellow and blues, attesting to his skill as a colorist. 

Humor winds its way through the exhibition. The peculiarity of Baron’s figures, and the comically-rendered faces in several works, provide a number of lighthearted moments. For instance, in Vacation, a hastily painted man with seemingly sunburned skin stands awkwardly in the landscape, while in Hi, Neighbor, a strange fellow appears to be either peering over a hedge or emerging from a mound of soil. In other somewhat mysterious works, the artist’s stylized, quirky figures appear hunched over as if pulling weeds or engaging in forms of manual labor. Baron creates an environment where abstraction—with its pure gesture and mark-making—merges with imagined subjects whose purpose and narrative are just out of reach.

 

   

Left: ANDREW BARON (American, born 1963). Container, 2022. Oil on wood panel. Courtesy of the artist.

Right: ANDREW BARON (American, born 1963). Breather #7, 2018. Oil on wood panel. Courtesy of the artist.

 

Press Release: All This I Give to You – Andrew Baron