My paintings are diagrammatic — a more precise term than abstraction. I deploy visual vocabularies that function as performative geometries, mapping otherwise invisible temporal processes and space-time relationships.
The series, “Stations of Attention” sits at the intersection of consciousness research and Buddhist philosophy. Attention — the most salient feature of awareness — is in fact highly fragmented and nonlinear, though we falsely perceive it as continuous, much as we perceive fluid motion in a film running below eighteen frames per second. These paintings make that fragmentation visible.
My process mirrors this: not an unbroken flow, but a succession of detours, interruptions, and blind spots - echoing the actual texture of lived experience. I think of my artwork as a balancing act of these irreconcilable states of movement across change.
Baris received his MBA from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia in 1985, and has been exhibited his paintings on canvas and paintings on paper regularly across the United States, Canada, and Europe in solo and group exhibitions and international art fairs. He has exhibited in such museums and institutions as: National Museum, Lublin, Poland; Wilhelm Morgner Museum, Soest, Germany; Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA; Institute of Visual Arts in Kielce, Poland; Museum St. Wendel, Germany; Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Penzance, UK; The Print Center, Philadelphia, PA; Ely Center of Contemporary Art, New Haven, CT; Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Wilmington, DE; Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit, NJ; BIENNIAL OF NON-OBJECTIVE ART, Pont de Claix, France; Kunstlerhaus Carnegie Mellon University Art Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA; University of Texas at Dallas, Dallas, TX; The Drawing Center, New York, NY, and more. Baris is a multi-year recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. His work is held in numerous public and private collections worldwide. Steve Baris lives in Philadelphia, where he continues to maintain an active studio practice.
Steve Baris is represented by Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, with gallery locations in Chelsea, New York City — at 529 West 20th Street and 179 10th Avenue. His work is available for purchase through the gallery and on Artsy.