DONALD BAECHLER: Remedy of Anything

May 15 - July 10,2021

From McClain Gallery: "McClain Gallery presents an exhibition of new work by Donald Baechler entitled Remedy of Anything. This is Baechler’s fourth solo show at McClain Gallery and combines small paintings with graphite draw- ings. Donald Baechler is an artist who “considers doubt the basis of any artistic work. What at first glance seems to be a poetic examination of children’s art, at a second look results to be a subtly differentiated examination of language, meaning, communication, and perception but also of categories like identity and dissimilarity, authenticity and faking, generality, and peculiarity....” - Peter Weiermair, Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Bologna (excerpt from Baechler: 77 Paintings, 2002). These intimate 2-foot square paintings, while not new to his œuvre, lay out an indexical vocabulary which Baechler has been developing for decades: blooming flowers, a swan, a glass-half-full (or half-emp- ty), a smile crowd each carry equal heft, mystery, and a dash of good humor. Baechler has been making these small paintings, al-most always 24 x 24 inches, since 1980. (The size was determined by the availability of cheap pre-stretched canvases in that size). He saw them initially as preparatory work to explore different types of paint, and varying approaches to color and imagery, before attacking larg-er canvases. “More or less every phase of my work as it developed in those years is represented in these paintings.” In 2002, Skira pub-lished a monograph to accompany a museum exhibition of 77 of these small paintings organized by the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in San Marino, Italy. As the artist explains: “When the recent pandemic sent many of us into a kind of exile, I found myself in upstate New York, initially without access to larger canvases to work on. The paintings in the present ex- hibition are from the series of works I began at that time in response to the altered circumstances we all found ourselves forced to navi- gate.” With titles like Collector of Cures and The Window Wish, the viewer finds themselves contemplating the healing power of art-mak- ing when our future is so unknown."

McClain Gallery 2242 Richmond Avenue
Houston, TX 77098
Get Directions