Senior & Shopmaker Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of
collages and box constructions by Hannelore Baron (1926-1987). Using found
boxes, many with hinged lids, Hannelore Baron's sculptures open and close
like books. Within each are assemblages of found artifacts - pieces of
wood, string, cloth, and paper - painted with rudimentary figures or scribbled
with the artist's own cryptic calligraphic imagery.
Equally at ease working in two dimensions, Baron's intimately scaled collages offer discrete worlds filled with quiet energy and visionary power. Of her work, Baron stated, "The materials I use in box constructions and collages are gathered with great care. The reason I use old cloth and boxes is that new material lacks the sentiment of the old, and seems too dry in an emotional sense."
As an avid reader of archeology and anthropology, Baron studied ceremonies
that marked the passages of life and death. By addressing these issues,
Baron's art contains its own ritual element. Like the German artist, Joseph
Beuys, her work imagines an ideal primitive state, with its own language,
customs, forms, and message.
Hannelore
Baron's work was the subject of a one-person exhibition at the Guggenheim
Museum in 1989 and more recently, of a traveling retrospective exhibition
Hannelore Baron: Works from 1969-1987 organized by the Smithsonian Institution
Traveling Exhibitions Service in 2001 and curated by Ingrid Shaffner.
Her work is currently featured in Six Centuries of Prints and Drawings:
Recent Acquisitions at the National Gallery, Washington, DC.
Gallery
hours are Tuesday-Friday 10 to 6; Saturday 11 to 6. For further information
please call 212-213-6767.
