Alexandra Bailliere
Legacy, record-keeping and the futility of trying to preserve time are central to Bailliere's investigation. Her work examines visual and physical traces of seemingly insignificant moments that are the record of a life lived. The mark formed by a head on a pillow or the daily remnants of a used coffee cup become valuable testimony of life. In her work, fleeting impressions in the everyday embody a kind of presence through absence. Whether by making casts of actual objects from moments of my daily life, or by creating abstract distillations of these observations, Bailliere considers the reciprocal relationship between presence and absence, and how something can be more palpably present in its absence.
Working in painting, sculpture, and installation, Bailliere uses materials as varied as plaster, receipt papers, aluminum flashing, acrylic medium and paint, interacting with light and shadow, to transform a fleeting moment into something tangible, effectively arresting time. Plaster-soaked cheesecloth captures grooves on the floor of the studio, along with dust and other material remnants present, becoming an abstract painting. An expansive grid of textured lines on the wall, rendered by hand in acrylic medium, alternates between emergence and disappearance, recasting perceived imperfections within a common space as a resonant, perceptual experience.
For more information about Alexandra, please visit her website.