NEWS
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Doors in Floors - Louise Sheldon and Glen BaldridgeMarch 16 - April 7, 2024
at Ditch Projects
"Blurring the lines between the hidden depths of the unconscious and the mystical allure of unseen worlds, ‘Doors in Floors’, featuring works by Glen Baldridge and Louise Sheldon, is an odyssey into the cryptic and the celestial. As gateways to clandestine worlds below, Baldridge's 'Trap Door' series reveals entry points to mysterious voids. He weaves a narrative of hidden truths and obscured realities, much like peeling back layers only to find more layers. His work is often enigmatic and dark, riddled with hidden text, echoing the idea that what we see can never be truly certain; wavering between pareidolic phantoms or intentionally obscured clues – a coherent paranoia.
Louise Sheldon's grommeted pieces, having spent months underfoot, embody a raw, unfiltered interaction with lived spaces. The scuffs and dirt are not mere blemishes but stories told by the material work itself. Adorned with spiral and floral patterns, her pieces evoke mystical portals, where we find ourselves in freefall, hurling through to a different dimension or state of consciousness. These artworks, while being portals in themselves, could also be seen as coverings for Baldridge's metaphysical trap doors, forming a nuanced and seemingly perfect intersection – a dance of concealment and revelation.
The exhibition represents a journey through the unknown. While Baldridge’s works hint at hidden depths and secret chambers of the mind, Sheldon offers a passage to somewhere mystical, somewhere otherworldly. Their combined narrative is a complex tapestry, weaving the subterranean with the supernatural, the seen with the unseen."
-Alex Dodge 2024
"No Way"
2019
EDITION OF 70
16 color screenprint on Coventry Rag
Paper: 39 1/2 x 31 1/2"
Image: 35 x 27"
available through Haystack Editions
ART
Glen Baldridge
Using a Candy Crush palette, and an abundance of drips and oscillating lines, this Brooklyn artist continues his two-decade-long exploration of subcultural aesthetics in a suite of eight paintings on paper, completed last year. Hippie and psychedelic styles converge in works that evoke summer-camp forays into crafts (marbleized paper, yarn painting, spin art). But, in Baldridge’s slyly exacting exhibition, the deceptively chaotic qualities of his faux-naïf compositions are balanced by a sophisticated restraint. Two paintings—both titled with the disoriented stoner query “Guys, what?”—depict small groups of startled creatures peering out from the pictures. These absurdly groovy figures are rendered by little more than colorful arches of concentric lines anchored by saltwater-taffy-like eyes, which anthropomorphize forms that would otherwise be categorized as biomorphic abstractions. There’s a comment here, perhaps, about pretensions in art and false distinctions between high and low, but it’s a subtle one relative to the rowdy charm of the show over all.
— Johanna Fateman
Glen Baldridge “Wigwag”
Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery
87 Franklin Street
New York, NY 10013
Jan 6 - Feb 11th, 2023
HALSEY MCKAY GALLERY
GLEN BALDRIDGE - WHAT NOW WHO HOW
September 2 - October 30, 2022
79 Newtown Lane, East Hampton, NY
For all further information please contact info@halseymckay.com
New screenprint edition!
No Way
2021
edition of 40
18 color screenprint
24 x 18 inches
purchase here
New edition published by Du-Good Press!
No Way
2022
edition of 20
28 color screenprint on Coventry Rag
paper size: 20 x 16 inches
printed at Du-Good Press
published by Du-Good Press
purchase here
This piece is included in the Halsey McKay Gallery 10th anninversary show
HALSEY MCKAY GALLERY
10 YEARS
May 28 – June 21, 2021, East Hampton, NY
I am included in Phil Sanders’ book Prints and Their Makers, published by Princeton Architectural Press. I have been collaborating with author and master printer Phil Sanders on projects since 2006, and we teamed up most recently to produce a special limited edition screenprint, Thin Ice- BFF, to celebrate the book’s release. This print is available for purchase now as the Artist’s Edition of Prints and Their Makers.
Thin Ice, BFF
two color screenprint with faux silver leaf
10 x 8 inches (25.4 x 20.3 cm)
printed and published by Phil Sanders
Edition Size: 100
Presenting works on paper by:
GRAHAM ANDERSON
GLEN BALDRIDGE
HOLLY COULIS
TAMARA GONZALES
LIZ LUISADA
Halsey McKay presenting new works at The Armory Show alongside works by Elias Hansen
booth # P11MoMA acquired new screenprint
Dream Burner from Pulled in Brooklyn, 2019
One from a portfolio with six screenprints
published by IPCNY
printed by Kayrock
edition of 60
New screenprint with Joseph Editions
No Way
2019
edition of 70
16 color screenprint on Coventry Rag
35 x 27 1/2 inches (Image size)
39 1/2 x 31 1/2 inches (paper size)
printed at BRT Printshop, NYC
NO WAY
June 8 – July 3
HALSEY MCKAY GALLERY
79 Newtown Lane East Hampton, NY 11937
Halsey McKay is thrilled to present No Way, Glen Baldridge’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. Glen Baldridge’s paintings extrapolate age-old paper marbling techniques to make abstract paintings of camouflaged texts. Using his own handmade tools, Baldridge deftly manipulates viscous acrylic paint for results that demonstrate both detailed control and material entropy. The effect simultane-ously mimics the ornamentation of head shop paraphernalia and ancient manuscripts. The tradition of marbled paper was used to give a seal of authenticity to documents in the preven-tion of counterfeiting and spreading of false information. Baldridge’s newest paintings are begun atop older marbled text works, further obscuring earlier declarations of dissatisfaction like “Dark Daze”,
“Buzz Kill”, “World War IV”, or “Obstacle Corpse”. This redaction gestures to feelings of recoil after saying something embarrassing or too incriminating to repeat. Embedded in dense eddies of acrylic paint the words “No Way” emerge. “No Way” can be interpreted as enthusiastic celebration of delight or an emphasis of disgust. It can also be used as a non-statement or deadened reaction used to address an event that demands response but can’t be emotionally dealt with. A brush-off in an age where shock value is used to mask more nefarious hidden truths.The pure beauty of these paintings acts as a similar ruse. This centuries old technique, applied to an ever repeating history.
Psychedelic Healing Center
Essex Flowers
19 Monroe Street, New York, NYMay 24 to June 23, 2019
Organized by Sarah Anne Johnson + Lydia McCarthy
Lisa Alvarado, David Altmejd, Glen Baldridge, Melissa Brown, Matthew Craven, Kelley Donahue, The Family Acid, Tamara Gonzales, Jess Johnson, Sarah Anne Johnson, Lydia McCarthy, Benny Merris, Shana Moulton, Bayne Peterson, David B. Smith, Mike Taylor, Fred Tomaselli, James Welling, Saya Woolfalk
We have entered a new world of psychedelic consciousness. It was birthed by Ken Kesey and raised by Terence McKenna - it is wild, open, Day-Glo, ego-death, downloaded onto our hard drive and written in our DNA. In our world we are witnessing deterioration, a crumbling of the illusions of freedom, equality and stability. We are moving towards fear and the unknown with eyes wide open.
The artists in this show have a sincere and deep relationship with psychedelic culture and entering into new, experimental ways of making and thinking.
May 16, 6–8 PM: Printers’ Proof, a panel with Glen Baldridge (Forth Estate), Luther Davis (Powerhouse Arts Printshop), Ruth Lingen (Line Press Limited), and Brad Ewing (Marginal Editions) at IPCNY in conjunction with Pulled in Brooklyn.
RISD Museum acquires the archive of prints produced between 2005 and 2015 by the now-defunct fine art print publisher Forth Estate
“Hideaway” from 2013 on exhibit at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Drawings and Prints: Selections from the Permanent Collection," August 8, 2017–November 20, 2017
