John Baldessari

Guitars
November 4 – December 10

A stylized graphic of a person playing an orange guitar, with the image emphasizing bold colors and minimal details against a monochrome background, reminiscent of contemporary art.
A close-up image of a person in a dark suit playing a bright yellow guitar, focusing on the hands strumming the strings, evoking the style of conceptual artist John Baldessari.
A graphic art depiction of a person with obscured facial features playing a vibrant red electric guitar. The image is stylized with high contrast colors, mainly red, white, and black.
A collage inspired by John Baldessari, featuring a person in a plaid shirt holding a large pink puzzle piece, with the background and other details obscured by the puzzle piece.
A black and white cutout image by visual artist John Baldessari, depicting a person holding a guitar, with the guitar colored in bright green. Only the torso and hands of the person are visible.
A contemporary artwork featuring two figures with obscured faces in black and white, highlighted by a bold blue abstract shape that intersects their bodies.

Press Release

Richard Levy Gallery is pleased to present Guitars an exhibition of prints by John Baldessari. In the recent work of John Baldessari, flat silhouettes of color are juxtaposed onto found photographs. These hybrid creations scramble the boundaries between photography and painting, representation and abstraction. New readings of found images are invoked by the insertion of his ambiguous shapes. Each 5-color screen print is laminated on Sintra. The guitar is then hand-cut and either sunken or raised to create three layers within each work.

In this recent series Guitars, Baldessari utilizes photographs of rock stars, troubadours, and folk singers with heads cropped from view. The guitars are “removed” from the black and white image and replaced by a monochromatic void set behind or on top of the photograph. The work playfully comments on the nature of music culture – the persona that stars assign their instruments and also the power a guitar can give a musician.

John Baldessari has had more than 120 solo exhibitions throughout the U.S. and Europe. His projects include artist books, videos, films, billboards and public works. His work resides in many important public art collections including The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. The artist currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

High-resolution images are available on request. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook: @levygallery 

Dates: November 4–December 10 2005
Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 11 am–4 pm
Location: 514 Central Avenue SW, Albuquerque, NM 87102
Contact: 505.766.9888, info@levygallery.com, www.levygallery.com @levygallery