Press release

The Baldwin Gallery is pleased to present new paintings in its second show by leading contemporary artist Carroll Dunham. In his latest works, Dunham has returned to his motif of trees in horizontal and vertical mixed media landscapes on linen. The wild green brushstrokes of the feral foliage possess his signature curvilinear and cartoon-like style and his dramatic sense of scale. The subject stands robustly and portentously against a somewhat stark background, and creates the flat abstraction for which Dunham is known. The landscapes are basic yet sophisticated, uncomplicated yet chaotic — a wide, simple sweep of paint next to an intricate web of lines and marks. Some of the trees, amidst a splash of blue sky, convey a prosperous, spirited vivacity while others, against a brooding grey atmosphere or fallen over, project a languid and decrepit lamentation. Paramount in Dunham’s paintings is a connection to life, in which the artist creates a distinct universe with his unique visual vocabulary that is both figurative and abstract.

Carroll Dunham was born in 1942 in New Haven, Connecticut and graduated from Trinity College in 1972. He had his first one-person show in New York in 1981 and since then has shown in major cities around the country. He has twice been featured in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Biennial Exhibition (1985 and 1995) and was the subject of a mid career retrospective at The New Museum. He has shown extensively worldwide. Dunham was awarded the 2004 Skowhegan Medal for Distinction in Painting. He currently works in New York and Connecticut.

The Baldwin Gallery is also pleased to present its fourth show by internationally acclaimed artist Sarah Charlesworth. “Work in Progress”, her newest photographic series, continues to advance the complex conversations she has explored throughout her accomplished career. Charlesworth intricately investigates the concept of color theory by revealing the purity of color, interplaying variations of hues and tones, and minimizing present forms. The result is a dialogue of color interaction, creating unexpected and complicated relationships. In Work in Progress, exquisitely refined photographs divulge the process of art making by exhibiting the tools used to create the image — and we are left with a commemoration of the “work in progress”. Charlesworth’s work has been important in coalescing fine art and an analytical study of photography in a contemporary realm.

Born in 1947, Sarah Charlesworth graduated from Barnard College in 1969, and currently resides in New York City. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held in major cities around the world, including: Los Angeles, New York, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Toronto, Berlin, Brussels, London, Edinburgh, Geneva, Paris, Rome, and Florence. Charlesworth’s photographs appear in museum collections throughout the United States and Europe, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and the Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, amongst many others.

Images are available upon request. Please call 970.920.9797 for further information.