Mark Moore Gallery presents Heart Above Head, the gallery's sixth major solo show from Las Vegas painter, Tim Bavington. Featuring eight new vivid compositions, the exhibition will showcase Bavington's adept translation of the aural and emotive to the optical and conceptual.
Drawn to vibrant palette of his neon-lit hometown, Bavington is a master of richly saturated color and visceral execution. Sourcing the melodies, instrument solos and prominent arrangements from pop and rock songs, he transcribes music into bands of synthetic polymer – the pigment oftentimes evoking the dynamic mood of ballad and artist alike. A lyrical Neil Young melody becomes a linear arrangement of polychromatic stripes, while a fervent Jimi Hendrix riff transforms into bleeding psychedelic abstraction – the style of both soloists echoed in Bavington's own interpretive technique. Bavington demonstrates the evolution of improvisation in pioneering music in this exhibition; the formal qualities of his trademark lines progressively disband and coalesce like the distortion pedal fuses the chord. As virtuoso Johnny Mercer sang, "…and so I come to you, my love, my heart above my head," Bavington illustrates creative footing between instinct and logic, spontaneity and structure – resulting in the simultaneous push and pull of the perceptible and signified. With a nod to his post-painterly abstraction forbearers, like Gene Davis and Kenneth Noland, Bavington distorts and short circuits his progressions to the point of ambient harmony; nearly Rothko-like in his ability to engender atmospheric swells and undulations in his canvases.