Please join us at Griffin Art Projects for a conversation on the work of our spring artist in residence, Michael Bauer. We will present this public conversation between Michael Bauer and GRIFFIN Director Lee Plested on Saturday, April 22, 3pm.

The discussion will centre around Bauer’s influences, approach to painting and the evolution of his pictorial language over the last 20 years. He will also play samples of the music he makes, which we will be broadcasting on our website. Please visit and subscribe to keep up on the downloads.

The uncertain and the uncanny often act as organizing devices in the paintings of Michael Bauer. Like the writing of George Bataille, his image systems utilize the ghoulish and discarded to float as defiant signifiers which are set loose to negotiate fields of defecated smears and corporal masses of painterly surface. Essentially a hermetic mode of research, Bauer is dedicated to the act of painting as enquiry, even if this work is done in a subjective pictorial language. This reckless reasoning is often framed by categorizing elements (sometimes in the form of a demarcating border, sometimes as an architectural detail) that define the picture plane as a field of linguistic research, but one dedicated to an improvisational and intuitive image-based mapping of contemporary human experience.

The gallery is currently presenting the exhibition Lewis Baltz Portfolios, from the collection of David Knaus, Palm Springs and Selections from the Collection of Claudia Beck and Andrew Gruft.