Steve Baris

Nested Forms is series of acrylic paintings on irregularly shaped Plexiglas panels. These pieces address my long-running fascination with the intersections of form, structure and notional space.  Whereas in much of my other work, the forms are dispersed and randomly distributed over a larger surface, with the Nested Forms I aim to compress multiple shapes into a single, flat object. I am interested in how that object can simultaneously hold and lose its form identity when its component parts vary so widely in shape, transparency and other intangible surface qualities.

I am especially interested in the juxtapositions of opaque, metallic surfaces with more translucent paint. I like how each of these surfaces suggests very different spatial registers, one projecting forward and the other inward. To riff off an old expression, I feel that a painting is finished when it seems to occupy two places at the same time.

Steve Baris