Federica Schiavo

OPENING THURSDAY 25 NOVEMBER, 6.00 - 9.00 PM
OCCUPIED PRESENTATION, 6.00 PM

Federica Schiavo Gallery is very pleased to announce American artist Bhakti Baxter’s first solo exhibition in Italy. The exhibition, titled Occupied, provides an overview of Baxter’s new work. Centering on the codependency between structure and space, pieces such as Uncomfortable Chair, Pattern Programming, Misaligned Interiors, and The Third Power, contemplate our ever-changing reality by intertwining elements of furniture, architecture, and landscape with the rigorous forces of modern physics and spirituality. His work explores the intricate and symmetrical aspects of nature, translated through geometric terms. Investigating the territory amid science and spirituality, his practice aims to bridge a medial relationship between the seemingly ordinary and the interpretive freedom of abstraction.

Working in collage, sculpture, and drawing, Baxter’s goal is to disorient and disrupt accepted boundaries, as he questions common perceptions of the mundane. In his collages on paper, for instance, Baxter is interested in how a circle can shift space, overlap, and carry other sections along with it. With a focus on architecture and furniture – the forms that organize and define space in our everyday experience – he dissects the plane via the circle, and merges stable forms into abstractions. Often, the buildings are hard lined modernist constructions, with few curves. Therefore, by rearranging the plane, dimensional shifts in spatial order spin out of control.

Just as scientists formulate mathematical models to describe new theories about how the universe works, Baxter’s art interprets natural phenomena. He explores how the mind interacts with matter, while acknowledging the importance of exercising intuition to locate explanations.

Occupied was inspired directly by a quote attributed to Lao Tzu:

Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub;
It is the center hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore profit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there.

On Thursday, 25 November at 6.00 pm, in occasion of the opening, Bhakti Baxter invites you to join him in a PowerPoint presentation that seeks to bring together a plethora of subjects through free association and imaginative interpretation. Incorporating images of hurricanes, electromagnetism, fractal geometry, architecture, tapestries, philosophy, and the un-like, Baxter will take us through a series of still images while injecting personal anecdotes with humor and curiosity. Questions or comments are welcome throughout the entire 45 minutes presentation.

For more information, please contact: Federica Schiavo Gallery, tel. +39 0645432028 or info@federicaschiavo.com