Since the late 1990s, Sara Baruh continues to develop her artistic practice, which bifurcates at different points and proceeds on asymmetrical developmental trajectories. This lesser-known artistic practice is the source of a rich oeuvre that encompasses the myriad painterly possibilities offered by mostly abstract conceptions and sometimes by the partial presence of the figure. Baruh pursues an experimental approach freely by always preserving the texture of the paper, paint and canvas she chooses and adding to these textures with painterly gestures. Her experimental approach determines the bifurcation points where the diversity appears in her oeuvre. The artist’s solo exhibition after a long hiatus, “Thus, and Thus” brings together Baruh’s recent works on both converging and diverging trajectories. The exhibition will be on view at the Mongeri Building between May 30 and July 26.
In both her canvases and works on paper, Sara Baruh creates energy fields of dots, lines, colors and patches. The expressionist use of paint, fragments of figures borrowed from nature and fluid forms that make up these fields give rise to images that stimulate both the conscious and subconscious mind within an idiosyncratic grammar of abstract painting as well as with a vitality reminiscent of graffiti. Nature itself, which Baruh always sees as a starting point for her works, also finds its place in the exhibition. Plants that many of us are used to encounter indoors take on unfamiliar forms, illuminated by full spectrum lighting designed to keep them alive throughout the exhibition.
The state of and a desire to leaving a trace is at the heart of Baruh’s relationship with art. These states of being moved by this desire and the ability to remain in such states, appear in their most prominent forms in the artist’s compositions woven with dots. The meditative mood Baruh reaches by repeating the dots with painterly gestures can also be reached by the viewer while following the streams in the compositions formed by the sum of the dots. Thus, the works become gateways or interfaces that connect the mood the artist is in during the production process with the mood to which she invites the viewer.
These doors open into mental spaces behind which viewers are left alone with their own thoughts. They also invite intertextual readings that evaluate Baruh’s artistic practice in a comprehensive manner. The surfaces in her works do not conceal wear and tear, and this appears most clearly on the artist’s favorite medium of choice, handmade papers. This quality of Baruh’s works makes it possible to continue conceptual inquiries about time and coincidence within the framework of these readings. Thus painting, in all its splendor, becomes a guide that illuminates still unexplored mental spaces with a strange light.