Alice Baber (b. 1928, Charleston, IL; d. 1982, New York, NY) was an artist, curator, feminist, and world traveler, who lived as both an art world insider and an outsider, never having gained the full acknowledgement she deserved throughout her lifetime. The first large-scale exhibition of Alice Baber’s work in over 40 years, Alice Baber: Reverse Infinity at Berry Campbell Gallery spotlights a long-overlooked Abstract Expressionist and foundational member of New York City’s Downtown scene. The exhibition will feature paintings by the artist created between 1960 and 1981 and will be accompanied by a 68-page catalogue authored by independent curator Dan Cameron, marking the first major piece of contemporary scholarship dedicated to Baber’s work.
Gallerists Christine Berry and Martha Campbell first learned about Baber over a decade ago while pouring over gallery rosters from the Downtown era, pursuing information about every artist listed whose name they did not know. The gallery now holds the largest cache of works from the artist and has played an instrumental role in the market’s recent surge of interest in Baber, taking her work from just $3k to nearly $700k at auction in November last year.
Featuring thinned-down oils and acrylics that act like watercolors, Baber’s work uncovers the pigments hidden in invisible energies, transliterating the movements of light and air across limitless space. While her paintings convey a spirit of unencumbered whimsy, Baber’s enduring commitment to technique and rigorous explorations of color theory are the foundations of her work. As her career progressed, her painterly investigations became more intentional, shifting from bold, free-associative watercolor forms toward a more judicious use of value in works that suggest a more complex, and perhaps even sinister, subtext.
Although many of the women of Abstract Expressionism have received belated scholarly and critical recognition in recent years, a preponderance of artists from this era remain unrecognized due to age, gender, location, ability, or perceived lack of depth. With Alice Baber: Reverse Infinity, Berry Campbell continues to correct the historical record by facilitating earnest reappraisals of artists whose work deserves serious critical engagement and positioning within art historical canons.
