Anna Zorina Gallery is pleased to present Connections, Robert Baribeau’s debut solo exhibition with the gallery. On view are two series of paintings that document the artist’s passion for nature through an Abstract Expressionist style. His experience as a landscape architect translates through a painter’s perspective into bold canvases that portray his vivid perception of the environment. The creations capture the inherent sublime beauty of nature through the exploration of color and texture.

The paintings within the Millbrook Series feature a notably organic texture created from the dense layering of fabric and thick impasto fields of lush color. The result is a representation of a neighborhood, alive with ecstatic and effortless strokes of vibrant color. Marks are scratched or wiped away and further overlapped with drips of viscous paint thus alluding to the fragile fluidity of memory. These transient details are amended by the inclusion of collected mementos such as patterned fabric, newspaper clippings or cardboard. Although spontaneous, the accumulation of details adds a psychological depth to the joyful scenery.

This exhibition marks the premier of the artist’s Trac series. These paintings seem to flip the perspective of the Millbrook works as if to provide an overview. Baribeau invents aerial observations, blueprints, or even typography, providing evidence of a mysterious location. The collaged elements add a curious reference to reality for this unknown place. Ease and impulse inherent in the application of paint allows for the scene to become intuitively and subconsciously accepted as familiar as well. These works are more minimalistic in color and form to represent a bolder, more graphic dynamic while an underlying highly textured surface quality maintains the visceral resonance with nature that is manifested throughout the artist’s oeuvre.

Robert Baribeau (b. 1949) studied at Portland State University prior to attaining his MFA from the Pratt Institute. He has been awarded with a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, a Pratt Institute Art Department Grant/Fellowship, and a Florence Saltzman-Heidel Foundation Grant. His work has been reviewed in Artforum, Artnews, The New York Times, The New York Sun and New York Magazine. Baribeau lives and works in New York State.