Collages and Box Constructions
January 25 - March 1, 2003

Senior & Shopmaker Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of the collages and wooden box constructions of Hannelore Baron (1927-1987). Over twenty collages and ten box constructions will be on view at the gallery, while the Neuberger Museum in Purchase, New York will present Hannelore Baron: Works from 1969-1987, organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) opening January 19th.

Fleeing Nazi Germany, Baron settled with her family in 1941 in New York, where she began to make art: in the late 1950's, abstract expressionist paintings in tempera, and soon after, collages fashioned from weathered fabric and bits of paper stitched and sewn together. Organized in small, eccentric patchwork grids, the collages are characterized by luminous, expressive color, and are often punctuated by Baron's energized pictographic text and images.

In the late 1960's, Baron began to make constructions of wood and found objects. Her materials allude to natural erosion imposed by time but also, especially in the reliquary-like wood constructions, to a suppression or containment imposed by force. The wood she used was not just weathered, but often charred, and bound with wire and cord and pierced with nails. A reader of archeology and anthropology, Baron was influenced by ceremonies that marked the passages of life and death in various cultures. Her art itself contains a ritual element that invites the viewer to decode a multitude of signs and symbols.

Hannelore Baron was born in Dillingen, Germany in 1927. Her work was the subject of a one-person show at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1989. Most recently, her work was included in the exhibition Deep Storage: Collecting, Storing, and Archiving in Art, presented at P.S.1 in Long Island City in 1998.

Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday, 10 am to 6 pm, and Saturday 11 am to 6 pm. For further information, contact Betsy Senior or Laurence Shopmaker.