Leslie Baum
Gallery Affiliations: Devening Projects + Editions
Region: Midwest
My work is alphabet-like, with individual pieces functioning as
fully realized objects and as the building blocks for paintingbased
installations. The work unfolds across diverse media
and scale, and includes large oil paintings, tabletop drawings,
standing floor panels, animations, watercolors, and spray-painted
drawings. Each material contributes a particular surface and has
its own personality. A mindful engagement with modern painting
sensibilities anchors this multiplicity. By sampling the modern
canon indirectly, through the lens of memory and through the
vagaries of digital representation, the work progresses like the
children’s game of telephone. The distortion and misquotation of
the original yield fresh imagery, surface, and palette. Fragments
from iconic paintings appear and reappear. Although many of
the art-historical references are transparent, their legibility is
muted by the imperfection of my hand. Accidental and inadvertent
gestures define this project. Experienced piece by piece, the
work celebrates moments both known and unnoticed. Taken as
a whole, it is an ode to painting’s recent history and its pluralistic
present.