In a small exhibition at Park Life Gallery, local artist Chris Baird presents Bad Company, a cohesive selection of new works across a variety of media. Three large-scale enamel paintings and a satellite grouping of collages, a print, and one 3D work draw on text as object, image, and source material. The books of Baird’s inspiration won’t be found on the shelves of Park Life, making the aesthetics and installation of the back room gallery intriguingly self-contained and self-reflexive.
The work in Bad Company elaborates on a series of book boxes included in the recent Popular Workshop group show Somewhere in the Fold. The plywood boxes supported by wedge-shaped shelves contain stacks of similarly sized paperbacks of a similar theme. Mostly of the self-help variety, the featured titles at Park Life include Venture Inward and Combat in the Erogenous Zone. In all of Baird’s book boxes, the combinations emphasize humorous redundancy with a sober pathos. In reference to the exhibition’s title, the work queries: Who — or what — is the “bad company?’ People? Or the self-help books with which you surround yourself?
Chris Baird, Bad Company, installation view.
In this vein, Baird’s work is reminiscent of Nina Katchadourian’s ongoing Sorted Books project, a series of found poems constructed within various libraries and private book collections. Like Katchadourian, Baird presents the viewer with tantalizing spines, but denies access to the books’ content. Baird implicates the viewer in his collections. Many of us scavenge curious-looking paperbacks out of free piles on sunny weekends. Most of these will remain unread. By boxing the books, Baird either puts a halt to collecting or celebrates the grouping, leaving room for more sorting, more piling, more accumulation without absorption.
Chris Baird, Untitled (Jumping someone else’s train), 2013.