Diann Bauer

Born in 1972 in New York, Diann Bauer lives and works in London and Berlin.

Solo exhibitions include 'Necrotroph-Optopolis', Paradise Row, London (2007) and 'Bludgeonerator', The Showroom, London (2006).

Commissions include 'Sabine Descent', a site-specific wall drawing commissioned through the Contemporary Art Society Consultancy for Pictet Collection, London (2009) and 'Harlow Temple of Utopias', the creation of a public pavillion and temporary space for contemporary art in collaboration with Roman Vassuer sited in Harlow, Essex (2008).

Bauer was featured in Contemporary Art Society's ARTfutures 2007 and ARTfutures 2005 held at Bloomberg SPACE, London. Her large-scale paintings and drawings perform like installations, altering the architecture of the spaces in which they are presented, while forcing viewers to move around these spaces in order to explore the works’ intricate detailing.

Bauer splices together imagery drawn from sources as diverse as Rubens paintings, Japanese prints, carnival caravans and contemporary architectural drawings and most recently bits of text appropriated from literature spanning from Thomas Pynchon to Yokio Mishima. Her works appear to be structured according to a cinematic vision, derived as much from history painting as from popular films. Delivering an excess of information, her singular images collapse the multiple points of view of a shifting camera eye. They compress historical time, tearing apart the fabric of cause-effect narrative. Responding to the demand for more, inherent in our contemporary moment, her representations suggest a violence so great, so spectacular and exciting, so unfathomable, that it bypasses ordinary sequential logic. This violence is the surplus of energy generated by absolute revelation and baroque excess, which coalesces into abject globs of flesh or gum as it ripples through her fragmented imagery…