Artist Richard Barlow To Create Massive Chalk Drawing In Bellevue

From Bellevue Arts Museum: Bellevue Arts Museum will present the first solo exhibition in the Pacific Northwest for Upstate New York-based artist Richard Barlow, opening April 27, 2018. Barlow's artistic practice is strongly rooted in his interest in photography, its chemical and quasi-alchemical beginnings, and its ability to depict, represent, and reproduce. Manifestshowcases three ongoing series of works by the artist in a variety of media exploring photography's origins and intersections with the natural world.

Manifest will open in two phases. The first phase, opening April 27, will include 30 works from Barlow's Covers series, which features mysteriously evocative images of the natural world—trees, mountains, water—rendered in silver leaf on vellum.

Accompanying these works will be three examples from Barlow's Photogenic Drawing series, an exploration of the origins of photography as 'light drawing' (photo: light; graph: drawing). In this series, Barlow plays with positive and negative space to reimagine one of the earliest photos in existence: Henry Fox-Talbot’s 1835 photograph of a large window at Laycock Abbey in rural England. During this first phase of the exhibition, the south wall of BAM's Boeing Apertures Gallery will feature a large blank chalk surface, about 800 square feet in area.

For the second phase of the exhibition, Barlow will fill in this blank chalk surface with his largest chalk drawing to date. BAM audiences will be able to observe Barlow at work in late June through early July while he produces a drawing that recreates the mystery and majesty of ancient woodland, a perfect subject for the Pacific Northwest. This new work is designed to be as temporal as the boreal forests themselves. It will be erased at the end of the exhibition and exist only in our memories or in the photographs that we take.

Richard Barlow: Manifest is organized by Bellevue Arts Museum and curated by Benedict Heywood.

About Bellevue Arts Museum

Bellevue Arts Museum provides a public forum for the community to contemplate, appreciate, and discuss visual culture. We work with audiences, artists, makers, and designers to understand our shared experience of the world. bellevuearts.org.

Photos courtesy of Bellevue Arts Museum (Richard Barlow with Roadside Picnic II at the Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany, New York)