Artist: David Bayus
Exhibition title: Chapel Perilous
Venue: Bass & Reiner, San Francisco, US
Date: September 2 – October 7, 2017
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Bass & Reiner, San Francisco
When we reach a stage where the map becomes inadequate for the territory, we become lost, we search for an ally–something to help us find our way back to a world we can understand. Our spiritual traditions help to ground us while our machines push further into a world that is increasingly unknowable. Alluding to this dissonance, Chapel Perilous seeks to place the viewer into a tenuous space where the spiritual and the technological are interwoven. – David Bayus
Chapel Perilous, Bass & Reiner’s first show with San Francisco based artist David Bayus, is the premiere of his new and highly anticipated video work, Session Two. Presented alongside new sculptures, drawings, and digital images that seem like artifacts from the world he has created, this exhibition continues the artist’s explorations in building narrative work.
Chapel Perilous seeks to place the viewer in a believable reality which they struggle to reconcile; stuck between dichotomies of city and country, the scientific and the spiritual. Using cinematic, industrial, and digital motifs, Bayus stitches together a multimedia exhibition composed of artifacts and documentation from a dark reflection of our own broken present.
Trained as a painter, Bayus taught himself to use digital composition tools in order to speed up his own painting and drawing work, eventually turning towards the expediency of these tools to build animated and time based work. Session Two marks another big leap in Bayus’ practice – an increased presence of his own body featured in the film.
David Bayus (b. 1982, Johnson City, TN) lives and works in San Francisco, CA. He is co-founder of BASEMENT art collective located in San Francisco’s Mission District. He received his MFA from The San Francisco Art Institute in 2010. He has exhibited work in the Bay Area at Et Al, City Limits, Ever Gold, Alter Space, the San Francisco Arts Commission, Southern Exposure, and more. Further afield, his work has been exhibited at Vacancy, Los Angeles; Field Contemporary, Vancouver; and at Material Art Fair; Mexico City. Editions of his work can be found in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
David Bayus, Chapel Perilous, 2017, exhibition view, Bass & Reiner, San Francisco
David Bayus, Chapel Perilous, 2017, exhibition view, Bass & Reiner, San Francisco
David Bayus, Chapel Perilous, 2017, exhibition view, Bass & Reiner, San Francisco
David Bayus, An Encrusted Series One Psychophotonic Matrix, 1-4, 2017, Foam, epoxy clay, steel pipe
David Bayus, Series Four Psychophotonic Array, 2017, Laser sintered nylon, carbon fiber, steel, plastic fasteners
David Bayus, We Have Seen How Tamed Gods Came About; Let us Repeat the Same Experiment, 2017, Laser sintered nylon, stainless steel, glass, ceramic bowl, wheel chair, CRT display, digital video loop, media player, wood
David Bayus, Chapel Perilous, 2017, exhibition view, Bass & Reiner, San Francisco
David Bayus, Session Two, 2017, Digital video on solid state drive, edition of 4
David Bayus, Session Two, 2017, Digital video on solid state drive, edition of 4
David Bayus, We Have Seen How Tamed Gods Came About; Let us Repeat the Same Experiment, 2017, Laser sintered nylon, stainless steel, glass, ceramic bowl, wheel chair, CRT display, digital video loop, media player, wood
David Bayus, We Have Seen How Tamed Gods Came About; Let us Repeat the Same Experiment, 2017, Laser sintered nylon, stainless steel, glass, ceramic bowl, wheel chair, CRT display, digital video loop, media player, wood
David Bayus, Oil of Grunt: 7.050 ml (Blue Blood: 6.000 ml.), 2017, Graphite on Vellum, custom frame, 13 x 14in
David Bayus, Let us Unfold the Animal Outward; the Sons of Heavens Shall be Tamed Angels, 2017, Archival pigment print mounted to sintra, 1/1, 27.9 x 21.6 in
David Bayus, Macrocolloidal Approach to Psychophotonic Matrix Production using a Series 9 Fabrication Table, 2017, Archival pigment print mounted to sintra, 1/1 , 34.5 x 29.2 in