Anthony Baab
Anthony Baab uses pen, pencil and thin-gauge drafting tape on panel to create mesmerizing drawings of crystalline structures and invented architectural forms. Inspired by the grandeur of cathedral architecture and the spirit of ancient constructions, Baab finds his own “sacred places” in the contemporary architectures of factories, dams, water treatment facilities, and greenhouses. For Baab, modern technologies designed to alter natural elements and cycles embody hubristic acts of violence against nature as well as heroic attempts to save it. Baab’s drawings of hybrid, quasi-utopian and sometimes absurdist architectures reflect the crisis of our engagement with the natural world, as seen through the hopeful
Baab likens the process of creating a drawing to the constant revisions of a historical text. A single work may require tens of thousands of tiny pieces of tape, painstakingly applied, and can take up to a year to complete. While working the surface of a panel (primed with up to thirty layers of gesso and acrylic), Baab allows evidence of earlier drafts to remain in the form of stray marks, smudges, and pencil lines. “Like a blueprint that has been plotted over many times on the same surface,” says the artist, “each drawing exposes a process of recalculations and erasures necessary to produce a final polished (work).”
Most recently, Baab has expanded his investigation of water-oriented themes to consider the structure of waves and the rendering of water in measurable units. He has also begun a series of sculptures based on the portable architecture of the military pup tent. Baab emphasizes that regardless of his particular interests at any one point in time, his overarching concern is always “large systems” viewed from a certain distance. “(It) seems to have been the way that I’ve always made art,” says Baab, “compulsively rendering little things over and over until they acquire a meaning, which can be passed on to the next body of work.”
-Stacy Switzer
Anthony Baab artist page from CSF’s “10″ (PDF)
To visit Anthony Baab’s website, click here.
