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Megan Baker’s practice is concerned with our understanding and perception of time in the fast-paced society in which we live. Particularly interested in deconstructing the way in which time unfolds through painting, the artist makes use of the physicality of oil paint itself to prompt the viewer to seek moments of stillness and tranquility in the contemplation of art.
Baker’s paintings locate themselves in an in-between state, vibrate and shift; they exist in the space between forming and dissolving, so that the pictorial surface does not coalesce or feel complete, but rather continually oscillates between the two. Gazing at Baker’s abstract-figurative canvases, the perception of time shifts and evolves as one is absorbed by the search and discovery of the next hidden detail.
Today, in ‘I See You in the Clouds, You Move with the Wind’, Baker continues to pursue this research by looking back on the Old Masters. Specifically, the artist uses Titian’s ‘Bacchus and Ariadne’ (1520-23) as a point of reference for the exploration of temporality in art history.
“I don’t think time is ever fixed to a certain point but moves in a similar way to the way that clouds form in the sky. In addition, the way painting is suspended, an image comes together until it disperses apart again, this too will fade, return back into the unknown, fall into the abyss, to know that it will never be as it once was.” (Megan Baker)
Baker brings art historical references into contemporary painting, breaking down and recreating Titian’s compositions and colours with a new aesthetic. Yet, such a revisitation of the Renaissance work goes beyond the purely visual realm and is used as an expedient to investigate the way in which we receive images today. .
Baker further investigates the relationship between the perception of time and our experience of images, with painting on the one hand and mass-media on the other: “Through the use of social media and technology we have become audience members to our own lives.
It feels like we have become conditioned to capture everything out of fear of forgetting, but once we look back on our lives all we will have is a collection of deferred experiences. I hope that painting can be the antidote to that, it is present, and through this work I hope to expand and extend moments in time rather than condensing and flattening them down.” (Megan Baker)
