Still life / life still: Main Gallery
July 15th - September 11th
SETH BAUSERMAN
I became a father in the midst of a pandemic. It is a profound experience to witness the abandon with which she takes on her world. She is careless; unselfconscious; and, so far, free from societal expectation. Watching her, I struggle to reconcile the wonder and joy that this new life has brought with the uncertainty and sadness that the world supplies. These paintings are a reflection of the past two years. They are my attempt to hold these two realities in balance, to understand how they relate and engage with each other over time.
This contradiction at the heart of parenting is both simple and infinitely complex, and so to reflect on it, I chose to adopt the traditional use of fruit in still life. Nothing could be simpler than a painting of a lemon, and yet historical use of fruit as allegory takes on layer after layer of nuance and a full weight of academic jargon. Fruit notates seasons, new life, and abundance, but also mortality and decay that come with the passage of time. Through repetition and abstraction, the fruit becomes something reminiscent but imagined. A new figure and form is derived from fruit, both fictional and familiar.
Every piece in this body of work begins as a simple, pure drawing. Layers of drawings, paper, and paint are then added and removed to affect and obscure that early clarity. The layers gather more weight until depth and time passing become the focus of our attention. They document our human experience—our development and growth as well as our pain and loss. Amongst the layers, glimpses of the original figure are evident, serving as reminders of where we started, markers for where we find ourselves at present and pointing to where we might go next. This process reminds us of the beauty, fragility, and temporality of ripe fruit.
FOOD / “I Wish This One Wasn’t Me”, 54 x 60”, $5,600
Fruit Bowl, 54 x 60”, $5,600
SOLD: Life Still, 54 x 60”, $5,600
SOLD: Ain’t No Good Thing Ever Dies, 36 x 36”
Individual Fruit #1-4* (Top left to bottom right), 18 x 18”, pencil, pastel, oil stick, and paper on wood panel, $1,800/ea.
SOLD: #4
Ain’t No Good Thing Ever Dies “Quilt”, 45 x 60”, $5,000
Individual Fruit #5-20 (Top left to bottom right), 18 x 18”, pencil, pastel, oil stick, and paper on wood panel, $1,800/ea.*
*SOLD: #11, #12, #15, #20
Seth Bauserman’s drawings are more question than statement. Each piece is a series of layers that hide and obscure, blend and conflict—each mimicking in color, texture, and form the process by which people come to understand or remain blind to the truth about themselves. They are portraits of taking on and stripping away, of presentation and concealment.
His works begin as layers of individual marks made upon paper. Each layer is then shaped and reshaped to conceal, emphasize, or transform the individual marks. Each is a record of presence and absence; forms made of simple strokes and their own negations.
A socio-political moment fraught with caricatures of groups and carelessness with words demands a visual idiom of careful perception and focused intention. These works invite introspection and instead of reaction—a visual space to consider the complex and layered nature of identity as a remedy to the flattening and simplifying of identity politics.
Seth Bauserman lives and works in Richmond, Virginia. Through a combination of materials and techniques, his work contemplates the complex and layered nature of identity. He is a recipient of a Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Professional Fellowship.