event
Artist's Talk with Joell Baxter

About the event

ARTIST'S TALK with JOELL BAXTER
Saturday, November 23, 4pm
Reception to follow. Open free to the public!
 

Kentler International Drawing Space is pleased to present Observer Effect, a solo drawing installation by Brooklyn, NY-based artist Joell Baxter.

Observer Effect is a site-specific exhibition of woven screen prints and drawings that hang from the wall and ceiling. To create her illusory works, Baxter cuts and arranges strips of heavy paper into loose, semi-transparent grids. She groups large panels into shifting formations that dangle, rotate and overlap one another, activating the space and the viewer. These vibrant, layered grids reveal hidden hues and dimensions as one moves throughout the gallery.

Baxter takes inspiration from science and the natural world, including atomic energy and color theory. Her work is sensitive to the viewer’s perspective as well as its setting, incorporating floor rubbings and color matches taken from the gallery. In addition to large-scale hanging and wall pieces, Observer Effect includes a series of small drawings that further explore Baxter’s interest in tonal relationships and linear structures.

Statement: 

Joell Baxter’s installations chase fleeting visions at the intersection of color and space. Built out of layers of printed, woven, and cut paper, the stacks of open weave reveal the layers beneath, forming complex structures of overlapping shapes and colors that pixelate and waver. Geometric compositions repeat within and across works at different scales and hues, referencing the ease of these shifts in digital space but enacted painstakingly by hand. Within each strip of paper, the printed colors are always in motion, graduating from one fully saturated hue to its opposite. Laid directly on floors and walls or hung like spectral screens, these works visually shift even as the viewer stays in place.

For Kentler International Drawing Space, Baxter will create a shimmering, permeable installation built out of woven paper panels that utilize the surfaces and voids of the space itself as a ground. Multiple porous layers will activate the existing architecture with vibrant shifting color. Visitors may enter and circumnavigate the installation, becoming both an observer and a creator of the experience.

Joell Baxter is a Brooklyn-based artist and teaching-artist. She has been awarded residencies at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; the Lower East Side Printshop; and the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program. Exhibitions include  Field Projects, New York, NY; the Marsh Gallery at Indiana University, Indianapolis, IN; and the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles, CA. In 2024 she will complete a permanent commission as part of NYC Department of Cultural Affairs’ Public Art for Public Schools. Baxter is also a visual arts teaching artist in the New York City public schools through Partnership with Children, NYC. She holds an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

ARTIST TALK link