Artists Info's Bob Barron'e exhibition runs until March 7th and shows 31 artworks. Wishing you a great show, Bob!
Barron’s art is an attempt to express vague musings about the passage of time made corporeal through certain images, surfaces and textures. He works primarily with mixed media and is interested in the idea of recycling materials that have been discarded as waste and turning them into art.
He uses card that he collects from local outlets. He then cuts, tears, paints and re-assemblesthe various pieces. Sometimes he attempts to remove the fresh paint to reveal parts of the text on the card or he will score and scratch the surface or perhaps sand it down to reveal the corrugations beneath. Barron uses a muted palette and similar motifs recur throughout the work: fragments of Greco-Roman sculpture, astronomical references, handprints, footprints, circles, squares – a small lexicon but all that’s needed to present us with a coherent artistic vision.
He has further used this interest in the use of discarded materials by working with old and broken roof slates. He washes the slates clean from years of soot and grime and scores into the surface with a sharp point before assembling the various pieces.
Barron explains: ‘I like the idea of working with slate because of the age and nature of the material.
Slate is of sedimentary origin, formed from the deposits of minerals collected on the beds of ancient seas millions of years ago. Movement of the Earth's crust, retreating seas and glaciation meant these ancient sea beds emerged to the Earth’s surface where they were eventually quarried by man to provide shelter from the winds and the rain. The slate I use has served this purpose and is eroded and marked by exposure to the elements as well as by man-made pollutants in the atmosphere. I am interested in the journey from the seabed to the quarry, from the quarry to the rooftop, and from the rooftop to the artwork.’
He added: ‘My work is essentially about communicating a certain aesthetic. There are some lines which Robert Hughes wrote about Richard Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park series of paintings which are pinned up in my studio:
"One hears neither the chant of surging millions, nor even the chorus of a movement, but one measured voice, quietly and tersely explaining why this light, this colour, this intrusion of a 30 degree angle into a glazed and modulated field might be valuable in the life of the mind and of feeling."
I am interested in the life of the mind and of feeling, but, nevertheless, people confronting the work will make of it what they will.’
