Flowers Gallery | Glen Baxter; Inextricably Vermillion | London
14 January – 19 February 2022
Glen Baxter; Inextricably Vermillion
Flowers Gallery
In-Person Viewing:
21 Cork Street, London W1S 3LZ
Virtual Viewing:
https://www.flowersgallery.com/exhibitions/533-glen-baxter-inexplicably-vermillion/
British artist Glen Baxter is renowned for his unique style of social surrealism in which subjects from popular culture are combined with an absurdist message. In this exhibition of works on paper, Baxter explores a world in which art and language collide with baffling consequences, creating what he describes as the ‘frisson’ of replacing the familiar with the unexpected.
Originally a poet, Baxter first read his poetry in 1974 at St. Mark’s Church, New York, before developing his distinctive drawing style, which combines images and text in the format of a single cell graphic panel. Deriving material from varied sources such as pulp fiction, adventure stories, and objects or foodstuff with names that he found intriguing (tofu for example,) Baxter’s surreal scenarios form a playful critique of contemporary society and culture.
Baxter works with a number of recurring personas who contemplate life’s big questions in incongruous scenarios. The surreal humour of his captions arises from the use of tangents and non-sequiturs, or as he says, “drawing connections with things that shouldn’t really be there,” to create a dreamlike dislocation of image, text and meaning.
In this exhibition, Baxter weaves surprising narratives featuring arctic picnics, cowboys pondering modern art, and clandestine gatherings of lepidopterists.
The exhibition coincides with the recent publication of his new book, New Ways with Vegetables and Other Disasters, published by Uitgeverij De Harmonie, NL in October 2021.
