“New Paintings” from Hannah Barnes, open from July 1st to July 28th
Opening Reception First Friday July 1st 6-10pm.

The work in this show has in no small way been influenced by the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges. I particularly looked to his ideas about time and his use of narrative structures as metaphors for meaning and experience. I found his use of mirrors, symmetry, simultaneity and circularity, labyrinths, and chance operations to be themes that applied directly to my own painting ideas.  

“Eyes of Borges” is based on an enlarged digital reproduction of an actual contour drawing made by Borges. The drawing is a self-portrait Borges created later in his life when he had lost his sight – literally, a blind contour drawing. I selected the portion of the image I imagined to represent his eyes. When my digital reproduction was enlarged in Photoshop, it became a broken, pixilated mass of lines and squares. I loved the idea of this drawing seen from a great distance – as a bad pixilated reproduction. I also love that the initial drawing was created from Borges’ memory of his face, from a place of blindness.
 
Artist Bio
Hannah Barnes was born in Bridgewater, Massachusetts and currently lives and works in Muncie Indiana. Barnes received her BFA in Painting from Maine College of Art and her MFA in VisualArt from Rutgers State University of New Jersey. Her work has been exhibited in galleries nationally including Work Gallery and Hogar Collection in Brooklyn NY, the Ohio State University in Columbus OH, Hay Gallery in Portland ME, Hello Gallery in New Haven CT, Arthouse Contemporary in Austin TX, and the Shore institute for Contemporary Art in Long Branch, NJ. Barnes has been a visiting artist and lecturer at Ohio State University, Kent State University, and Maine College of Art and is currently assistant professor of painting at ball state university.    


Barnes’s work draws on traditional media and painterly craft to explore themes of ambiguity, fragmentation, and the rejection of overt meaning in painting. This exhibition presents new oil paintings, works on paper, and a large site-specific wall painting.