Opening Reception:
Saturday, April 6, 7 pm – 10 pm

See Art + Design is pleased to present Bryan Christopher Baker’s newest body of work, Illuminator Compositions.  In these compositions, Baker explores fields of circumstance, with a nod to both mechanical and organic structural systems, allowing layers of divergent microscopic arrays of dots to veil across one another to build upon and affect their neighbors in space.  In each piece, different regions are allowed to become unified by a nearly invisible element that permeates without regard to assumed borders, moving into and through areas of assumed independence.

In Illuminator Compositions, Baker follows his usual work process, as pieces are developed in groups, beginning with a planned series of slightly varied incarnations, and following systematic experiments purposefully chosen to identify a small number of variables which have the possibility to yield countless levels of variation. The metaphorical reasoning Baker finds for taking multiple approaches from the same angle is that if you are going to develop a word, you might as well lean into it a bit further and find out what else can be said in that new language.

Similar to his Dice Prints, a recent body of work, Baker’s new pieces have a presence of certainty because they are not renderings of something—rather they are renderings made by something.

View images from the exhibit

In See Art + Design’s first solo exhibit of the season, artist Emily Duke presents her latest series of sculptures, described as a convergence of imagined forms and fabricated sequences. Using slab-built ceramic, Duke assembles partners bound together through tension and weight. In this process, she allows herself the freedom to re-imagine, abstract and construct forms with indeterminate purposes.

Emily Duke is the newest Ceramic Artist in Residence at Red Star Studios in Kansas City , MO. Duke graduated from the College for Creative Studies in 2009. She worked on staff at Ox-Bow School of Art and artist residencies for the past several years. Currently, Duke is a Ceramic Artist Mentor to Kansas City’s youth. Recent group exhibition venues include The Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids, Macomb Center for Performing Arts, and Ox-Bow School of Art.

Description

Gamma Aquilae

Hand-set Letterpress Printing on Kitakata Paper
16 x 20 inches

Iota Ursae Majoris

Hand-set Letterpress Printing on Kitakata Paper
16 x 20 inches

View images from the exhibit

Bryan Christopher Baker’s letterpress studio, Stukenborg Press, has spent the last year exploring the astronomical number of variations possible while utilizing a limited set of variables: six-sided dice. After years of printing from traditional hand-set type, Baker has begun a series of limited edition prints that are composed and printed solely from dice.

Each composition is arranged on the bed of an antique printing press, and inked impressions are then pulled directly off of the face of the array. These prints touch on notions of order, disorder, fate, and chance; but, also can bring to mind cellular structures, and systems of computation. From within Bryan’s “fields of situations” patterns emerge that shift between textile design and depictions of microscopic forces.

Bryan Christopher Baker’s debut in Detroit happens this Saturday, January 21, at Re:View’s Exhibitions Gallery with a one-night project titled “An evening of Order and Other Formations, Dice Prints, Tar Prints, Cut Paper, and a Pile of Answers.” As the title indicates, this special project will present more than Baker’s well known dice print series, providing viewers with a unique insight into the artist’s many influences and inspirations.

Description

Polarity and the Space Between

2011
Mixed medial on panel,
61 x 36 inches

Print 1 from "Polarity and the Space Between"

Print 2 from "Polarity and the Space Between"

Print 3 from "Polarity and the Space Between"

Print 4 from "Polarity and the Space Between"

Print 5 from "Polarity and the Space Between"

Oscillating Axiom - Center

9.25" x 12"

Oscillating Axiom - Left

9.25" x 12"

Oscillating Axiom - Right

9.25" x 12"

Unrooted Ungulation

2011
Mixed medial on album covers,
62 x 37 inches

Intersections

2011
Mixed media on metal,
8 x 18.5 inches

Karat Cake

2011
Mixed media on metal
6 x 7 inches

Entangled Stretch

2011
Mixed media on wood
16 x 37 inches

Thoughts within Quiescence

2011
Mixed media on panel
42 x 17.5 inches

Polychromasia

2011
Mixed media on panel
28 x 9.5 inches

Anti Axis Thesis

2011
Mixed media on rubber balls and wood
43 (w) x 26 (d) x 24 (h) inches

Anti Axis Thesis

2011
Mixed media on rubber balls and wood
43 (w) x 26 (d) x 24 (h) inches

Left, Right, and Center

2011
Mixed media on skate board
16 x 16 inches

Hot House

2011
Mixed media on skate board
8 x 22 inches

Deja vu Vu

2011
Mixed media on skate board
8 x 30 inches

Impasse

2011
Mixed media on skate board
8 x 28 inches

Up downs and where it rounds

2011
Mixed media on skate board
8 x 30 inches

Dirty talk talk dirty dirty talk talk dirty dirty talk

2011
Drawing on vaccum bags

DETAIL Dirty talk 1

2011
Drawing on vaccum bags

DETAIL Dirty talk 2

2011
Drawing on vaccum bags

DETAIL Dirty talk 3

2011
Drawing on vaccum bags

DETAIL Dirty talk 4

2011
Drawing on vaccum bags

DETAIL Dirty talk 5

2011
Drawing on vaccum bags

Dead Lock

View images from the exhibit

In his new solo exhibit at Re:View, “Polarity and the Space Between,” painter Dennis Hayes IV continues to build a body of work that takes reclaimed materials and transforms their surface with poetic visual commentary on the parity between organic and industrialized exchanges. Branching off from an ongoing series of ornithological portraits, Hayes’ latest work presents hybridizations of our natural and constructed environments. These structures, patterns, and forms symbolize the tension and attraction of interpersonal relations and personal growth.

Hayes also continues to pull inspiration from rust belt landscapes, physics and geometry to aestheticize socioeconomic and environmental stresses into what he calls “physio-spacial and neuro-spacial landscapes.” In this latest body of work, an optimistic palette contrasts with rust and fatigued surfaces, evoking a sense of organized chaos and the cyclical nature of deterioration and rebirth through time.

Dennis Hayes IV received a BAFA from Alfred University, in New York. He has held his studio practice at his home in Ferndale, Michigan, for the past eight years. Hayes has shown extensively in different parts of the country, including Los Angeles, CA, and Portland, OR, and in Toronto, Canada.

Description

Swing

2011
Mixed media on paper
29 x 23 inches

Child's Play

2011
Mixed media on paper
85 x 47 inches

Tire

2011
Mixed media on paper
27 x 32 inches

Toy Gun

2011
Mixed media on paper
34 x 22 inches

Tub

2011
Mixed media on paper
19 x 26 inches

Training Wheels

2011
Mixed media on paper
19 x 26 inches

Marbles and Polka Dots

2011
Mixed media on paper
47 x 55 inches

Masquerade

2011
Mixed media on paper
19 x 15 inches

Yellow Mask

2011
Mixed media on paper
15 x 19 inches

Elements

2011
Mixed media on paper
15 x 19 inches

View images from the exhibit

In this special project, including mixed media works, sculpture, and installation, artist Chris Lujan combines different elements to explore the idealisms and innocence of childhood and how the games and activities we engage in as a child inform and shape us as adults. Lujan explores the relentless and unfulfilled desire to fully return and immerse in the rawness, power and clarity of childhood and the reality that our play, dreams and aspirations as a child, which were quite real at the time, were rooted in a paradigm that was as fleeting as a summer’s day.

Using a series of documentary photos of her family, Lujan revisits images that have long lost any sense of “truth” and use them as a guide to tell a new story. Combining different mediums, she creates layered images that stand alone as singular pieces, as well connect into an intricate storyboard of insights and raw emotions.

Description

Hyperbolic Chair

2011

Hyperbolic Chair

2011

Hyperbolic Chair

2011

Hyperbolic Table

2011

Hyperbolic Table

2011

Hyperbolic Table

2011

Hyperbolic Table

2011

Breakplane Remix Dennis Hayes

2011

Breakplane Rocker

2011
Birch plywood

DETAIL Breakplane Rocker

2011
Birch plywood

Interlocker Chandelier

2011
Birch plywood

DETAIL Interlocker Chandelier

2011
Birch plywood

Bentplane Light #1

2011
Birch plywood

Bentplane Light #2

2011
Birch plywood

Extralocker End Table

2011

DETAIL Extralocker End Table

2011

Interlocker Floor Lamp

2011
Birch plywood

DETAIL Interlocker Floor Lamp

2011
Birch plywood

Interlocker Pendant

2011
Birch plywood

Introvert Stool

2010
Maple and fiber rush

DETAIL Introvert Stool

2010
Maple and fiber rush

Lamps

2011
Birch plywood