For his second solo exhibition at 401contemporary, the British artist Stuart Bailes (*1985) assumes the role of artist as field worker, as photographic explorer. His compositions reveal spaces and objects that captivate the camera’s eye, blurring the distinction between studio and outside world, between isolation and immersion. Bailes channels the ideological spirit of the grand and faded Modernist projects, though rather than attempting to attain any kind of finality, his images project the promise and mystery of unknown beginnings, of a radical subjectivity. These works attempt to expose the truth of art as simultaneously autonomous and performative, enticing us along a path of abstraction that folds in on itself, ultimately guiding us back towards the immanent ground of art, and of the world as it is.
