28 August - 28 September, 2003
Lars Bohman Gallery
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American artist Donald Baechler starts off the new season at Gallery Lars Bohman. In this his fifth exhibition at the gallery he shows new paintings.

Donald Baechler’s works are a declaration in favour of the hybrid. He juxtaposes the abstract and the figurative, the childishly simple and the conceptually sophisticated, graffiti and elements of different styles and genres within 20th century art. The spirit of appropriation lies at the heart of Baechler’s art. He does not hesitate to, in an honest and liberating way, undermine the fine art and highbrow culture status of his own works. Absurd paradoxes are stacked in a playful and naive way, and if anything threatens to become too logical or coherent or believable, it is immediately broken up, or painted over. Baechler’s grisaille paintings and collages consist of several layers of material - washcloths, canvas and pieces of lace, that together constitute a type of archaeological surface with a multilayered character. On the often abstract background, using thick, black brushstrokes, Baechler then paints figurative everyday motives such as flowers, birds, beach balls and trees with an affected clumsiness and a bogus naivety. In this way, his work develops an ‘aesthetic of simplicity’ and pays ironic tribute to a kind of primitivism, which is meant to cast doubt on, and overturn, what Baechler considers to be academic conventions and the affectations of Minimalist and Conceptual Art.

Donald Beachler was born in Hartford, New England in 1956. He attended the Maryland Institute College of Art and Cooper Union in New York, after completing his studies at Städelschule in Frankfurt during the late 1970s he moved to New York where he lives and works. Baechler quickly became one of New York’s most esteemed artists, not least among his peers, whom he also to a large extent influenced. He became known to a wider audience with the Whitney Biennial in 1989. Since then he has exhibited extensively in the United States and in Europe. Travelling, constantly spending time in different places, is one of the most important sources of inspiration for Baechler. He is a true globetrotter who eagerly consumes new cities, and it is on his journeys, in bars or on sightseeing buses that he finds inspiration for new ideas and motives.

Donald Beachler is represented at, among others, the Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim and the Whitney Museum in New York, Centre Georges Pompidou and the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris.