Emma Gray HQ is delighted to present Ever Baldwin’s first solo show  “PLENTY” in Los Angeles. Opening Saturday March 26th - May 6th 2022 from 12-4pm
For Ever Baldwin, the difference between inner and outer stimuli cannot be entirely discerned, which is why their new paintings at Emma Gray HQ are the fruits of two worlds: the outer encompasses aspects such as the various seasons in bucolic upstate New York, where Baldwin lives, the artistic individuation of drag queens, artists like Arthur Dove and Marsden Hartley, to the simple immediacy of working with materials. Baldwin balances this input with their inner world, which includes their dreams in sleep and the channeled advice of persons no longer alive. The duality of each side is working to unbalance so as to re-balance the paintings, which arise from a deeply intuitive process that is constantly informed.

The resulting works have aptly semi-symmetrical compositions, featuring organic forms, redolent of eyes, lips, vulva, or organs, as if in the midst of coalescence, all framed (or enshrined) by the artist in hand-carved sooty wood. Their totalities of painted and sculpted space behave like filigree characters as icons for contemplation. This deeply organic process unsurprisingly orients Baldwin’s color towards the carbonized, earthen and subdued, save for bright pearls of luminescence commonly reserved for creatures of the deep sea. 

Whilst being made, the paintings always ask of Baldwin, “What is needed here?”, which necessitates them to never work from a preconceived notion of the final composition. The paintings arrive to Baldwin, layer by layer, by their scraping passages out and reconstituting them into gestalt images that emerge from a synchrony of rhythms in their body and mind. It’s for this reason Baldwin’s work appears to be deeply ritualistic and ancient in tone, preferring the rigors of being present to the ‘issues of the day’,  which while important, are diffused through the lens of Baldwin’s ancestors, friends, and preoccupations. They assist with Baldwin’s ongoing project to compound their inner and outer worlds into essentialized, iconic and secular objects made for prayer.

Ever Baldwin is based in Catskill NY. Their exhibition at Five Car Garage, “PLENTY”, is their first solo show in Los Angeles. Other recent exhibitions include a solo presentation with JAG Projects at Hudson House and group shows at NADA Miami with JAG Projects, Underdonk in Brooklyn, NY, Opalka Gallery in Albany NY, and Left Field Gallery in Los Osos, CA. A solo exhibition with Marinaro in NY is forthcoming. Ever is a 2021 recipient of the NYFA/NYSCA Fellowship in Painting. They have attended residency programs at The Ragdale Foundation, ACRE, The Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, and The Atlantic Center for the Arts. Ever holds a BFA in painting from The Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA  from The School of The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston