Galerie Catherine Bastide is pleased to present its second solo exhibition by American artist Kelley Walker on view till July 21st., 2012.

Organized around a series of recent works, this exhibition presents a new direction in his work. While elaborating upon the research of the artist’s experimenting with the very materiality of the media image, this ambitious, radical and complex project is based on an observation of a new relation to things at the time of their massive translation into digital data, as new modes of production and perception of a reality informed by the many technological representations that structure it. The result is a set of nearly two hundred panels: a formalization of astounding accuracy, as a conceptual enigma, an impossible, bewildering image.

From a collection of advertisements made in the United States between the 1950s and the early 1970s for cars of the German brand Volkswagen, praising the iconic Beetle car, or Bug, Kelley Walker started work in 2011 on a series of screen-printed works using CMYK inks + pantone on MDF, elaborating these images in a characteristic graphical manner, bestowing upon them a nebulous visual status. 

(text source: Galerie Catherine Bastide)

Kelley Walker, 2012, exhibition view; Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Catherine Bastide / Photo credits : Isabelle Arthuis.

More about Kelley Walker (b. 1969, Columbus, Georgia)

Highly conceptual and visually provocative, Kelley Walker’s work tackles some of today’s most complex debates around issues of authorship and authenticity, reproduction and circulation, and the role of the viewer.

Showing a particular interest in the changes brought about by the use of computer-generated imagery, Walker has been investigating the ways in which images can be sampled, altered, disseminated and then re-appropriated within the artistic realm. Using images directly lifted from mass-media sources (and often depicting disasters such as earthquakes or plane crashes), Walker digitally “paints” over the image, adding design elements that interact in ambiguous ways with the image.

(text source: Paula Cooper Gallery)

Education:  BFA, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 1995.

Further information here...(ArtSlant Profile) (Gallery)

(Image at top: Kelley Walker, Bug152_01, Pantone 369 U 40, 64 x 40,64 cm; Courtesy of the Artist and Galerie Catherine Bastide)