For Immediate Release:
Donald Baechler Sixteen Bad Neighbors at Arts+Leisure
October 9th - November 9th, 2014
Artist’s Reception: Sat Oct 11th, 7-10pm
Arts+Leisure is proud to present a brand new suite of graphite on paper works by the renowned artist Donald Baechler, entitled Sixteen Bad Neighbors.
Disarmingly simple and childlike at first glance, these drawings also belie various darker areas of the psyche, upon further investigation. The titles of these works hint at a shadowland in the artist’s subconscious: Bag Full of Sunshine (Girl), Shadow of Name, The Wave and the Grave, The Nowhere That Killed the Nothing, etc.
At once light and dark, playful and macabre, ironic and earnest, these drawings have a fragmentary quality, as if excerpted from a longer narrative in the artist’s history. There is a stream-of-consciousness feel to the series: figures, faces and skulls floating in mid-air, hanging in suspense, riddled with dusky fingerprints. They are stripped-down ideas, the basic framework of Baechler’s artistic oeuvre, providing direct evidence of the origin and process of his larger works. Pollock’s psychoanalytic drawings, created during sessions in Jungian therapy, also come to mind, in terms of their intimacy and dreamlike quality: an artist unburdening his mind and soul of certain demons buried within.
Much has been written regarding Baechler’s sly humor and the youthful irreverence inherent in his work, at times masking a deeper, world-weary angst. These new drawings are no exception. Their style is a synthesis of raw and elegant, sophisticated and lowbrow - having roots in punk-era graffiti and the 80s east village scene. It is a great pleasure to experience these drawings together in A+L’s equally raw and elegant East Harlem confines.
Donald Baechler was born in Hartford, CT. He studied at the Maryland Institute in Baltimore, the Cooper Union School of Art in New York, and the Hochschule fuer bildende Kuenste in Frankfurt Germany. Baechler exhibited for many years at Tony Shafrazi Gallery, in New York, and is currently represented by Cheim and Read Gallery in New York. He has exhibited internationally for almost 35 years, and his works are found in many public and private collections worldwide. Although known initially primarily as a painter, he currently divides his time equally between painting and sculpture. Donald Baechler lives and works in New York City and in Spencertown, NY.
Please join us for a reception with the artist on Sat, Oct 11th from 7-10pm. The exhibition is accompanied by a limited edition artist’s book, Sixteen Bad Neighbors, containing the drawings and Baechler’s text. Special thanks to Cheim and Read for permission to exhibit these drawings. For more information please contact Nick Lawrence at 917-880-7299 or email nick@artsandleisure.net.