Coinciding with Ghosting the Screen, Cirrus is also pleased to announce the exhibition of John Baldessari’s largest prints to date, Engravings with Sounds: Sniffle, Snigger, Arg. From his first portfolio with Cirrus (Raw Prints,1976), for which he used photographs of Santa Monica mall-goers in conversation with their respective formal elements, to his most recent publications, John Baldessari has been invested in tapping into the foundations of our visual vocabulary.
Engravings with Sounds continues Baldessari’s longstanding relationship with image and text, while engaging the influences of our creative predecessors. For the suite of three prints, he has paired images of 16th century engravings with written sound, or onomatopoeia. While this juxtaposition may seem at odds, it is notable of Baldessari’s wry sense of humor and use of association to question our preconceptions about language.
John Baldessari was born in National City in 1931 and currently lives and works in Santa Monica, California. He studied at San Diego State University, Otis Art Institute, Chouinard Art Institute and the University of California at Berkeley. For nearly 30 years, he was an important figure in California institutions, having taught at California Institute of the Arts and the University of California at Los Angeles. He has had a number of museum and gallery shows throughout North America, Europe and Asia, including Pictures & Scripts, Marian Goodman Gallery, London, John Baldessari, PKM Gallery, Seoul, South Korea, and John Baldessari, Sprüth Magers’ inaugural exhibition of their new Los Angeles space.