Math Bass

Season 10 continues!!! Russell & Robert meet leading artist Math Bass from their studio in Los Angeles, California. Bass is an artist known for fusing performance with paintings and sculptures using formal elements like solid colors, geometric imagery, raw materials, and visual symbols. Bass has exhibited internationally and is represented by Tanya Leighton, Berlin and Vielmetter, Los Angeles.

Math Bass (b. 1981, New York, NY, lives and works in Los Angeles, CA) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans across painting, performance, sculpture, and video. Throughout the work of Math Bass, recognizable forms appear and yet turn abstract, becoming shapes rather than signifiers, like shadows manipulated by the sun. Repetition is used as a tool to foreground these forms as part of a visual lexicon Bass has been developing over the last several years in the Newz! series — where forms and symbols exist in a multitude of perspectives and (re)interpretation — suggesting the possibility of mutable meaning.

Though graphic in the flatness of the forms, there is a crispness and lightness to Bass’s geometric abstraction–thin layers of opaque paint are delicately applied to the raw canvas. In their artistic practice, the artist explores breaking down the common boundaries found within the medium(s) and modes of presentation in order to actively engage the viewer in both surreal and everyday ways.

Bass received a BA from Hampshire College and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. Recent solo exhibitions include: Tanya Leighton, Berlin (2019); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018); Mary Boone Gallery, New York (2018); The Jewish Museum, New York (2017); Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2017); and MoMA PS1, New York (2015). Bass has also participated in selected group exhibitions at Martos Gallery, New York (2019); Fredericks & Freiser, New York (2019); Gordon Robichaux, New York (2018); and the Made in L.A. Biennial at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, (2012). They will have a solo exhibition at the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, Seattle, Fall 2021 - Winter 2022.

Their work is included in the permanent collections of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; and Yuz Museum, Shanghai, CN.

Follow @MathPearlBass on Instagram.

For images of all artworks discussed in this episode visit @TalkArt. Talk Art theme music by Jack Northover @JackNorthoverMusic courtesy of HowlTown.com We've just joined Twitter too @TalkArt. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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