Radcliffe Bailey: Between Two Worlds, 2008-2009.

Radcliffe Bailey (b. 1968) has quickly become recognized as one of the most important artists working in the Southeast. His work is the combination of personal reflection and innovation within a serious understanding of artistic traditions. Much of his work uses vintage sepia-tone photographs of African-Americans from his family’s collection. Using these images as the centerpiece of his artworks, he constructs sophisticated collaged artworks around them that reflected in abstract ways the presence of history within our contemporary world.

The title of the exhibition, Between Two Worlds, refers to a number of different considerations: Past and Present. Paintings and Prints. Tradition and Innovation. Migration and Settlement. While the exhibition includes three of his most recently completed monumental paintings, artworks that displays Bailey’s current artistic direction, the exhibition also looks back at work produced by Bailey as his career was beginning to rise to national prominence in the mid-1990s. Included are works from a 1997 series entitled Until I Die, mixed media prints that reflect the deep influence of music on Bailey’s work. Those works and his more recent work also address the issue of migration that has served to form and develop this country.