Richard Baker

The Tibor de Nagy Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Richard Baker. It is the artist’s fifth solo exhibition with the gallery and his first since 2010. The artist is known for his precise paintings of still lifes teetering uneasily in front of a landscape or cityscape. They often hold an inventory of objects including tulips, fruit, books, photographs, playing cards and martinis.

The artist has for many years created plaster sculptures objects that seem to have escaped the paintings and been animated with great verisimilitude. The objects have the uncanny ability to easily trick an unwitting viewer. The exhibition will include an array of these sculptures—donuts, Kit Kat bars, Hershey bars, Whoopee cushions, children’s paddle games, Eggo waffles—arranged in a vitrine, as one might come across them lying on a table.

The exhibition comprises abstract and representational paintings and objects. Baker has done a number of trompe l’oeil paintings of single books that float against a ground. The show evinces a kind of freedom, a gathering together of the artist’s various working modes. In a sense the artist is deliberately—and joyfully—taking a “holiday” from the pressures of manufacturing a style or of meaning.

Richard Baker has exhibited widely throughout the United States. He attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore. He has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards including the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant and the New England Foundation for the Arts Grant. He currently teaches at the Mason Gross School of Art at Rutgers University.