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OX-OP Arts
Presents:
Gary Baseman
Open Wounds (and other paintings about vulnerability)
May 3rd – 31st
Artist reception
Saturday May 3, 7:00 pm – 10:00pm

On May 3rd, 2003, Gary Baseman’s newest solo exhibition, “Open Wounds and Other Paintings About Vulnerability,” will open its four-week run at the OX-OP Gallery. At first glance, these works may be taken as a sort of playful American folk art: a perfectly normal, comfortable subject matter made up of accessible, fun characters, drawn with cartoonishly big, staring eyes and wide grins. Immediately following that first glance, though, the viewer will be drawn into Baseman’s complex web of artistic story telling, laid out with a manic, iconic style reminiscent of the visually dense triptychs of Heironomous Bosch. These paintings remind one of the ever-chipper co-worker: easy to get along with and outwardly sunny, but always hiding a dark, lurking ball of paranoia and animal feeling.

Described by some as egotistical, and others as self-deprecating, Baseman himself may just exist in the very place he says his art does: “where the line between genius and stupidity has been smudged beyond recognition.” This smudging has allowed Baseman’s hand to lend itself equally well to both the joyfully silly, but Emmy winning “Disney’s Teachers Pet” series and to the more disjointed and visceral paintings he displays in his solo shows. In the end, these two media tend not to be so very far apart.

Baseman’s prolific professional credits belay his notions of “mediocrity.” In addition to the Disney animation series (now in production as a full-length feature), his handful of solo exhibitions include the recently lauded “I Am Your Piñata and Other Paintings About Love and Sacrifice” at the La Luz De Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles, as well as 2000’s “Dumb Luck and Other Paintings About Lack of Control” at the Mendenhall Gallery in Pasadena. Past years have also seen a mainstream market saturated with Baseman’s vast menagerie: Time, Rolling Stone, GQ, Entertainment Weekly, Sports Illustrated, Forbes and The New York Times have all highlighted his works, and The New Yorker rewarded him with a Mothers’ Day cover depicting a young bird serving his mother breakfast in bed (his siblings’ eggs, of course). His other numerous accomplishments include:

•Laudation for Teacher’s Pet: Emmy award for Best Animated Show, Reuben Award in Television Animation from the National Cartoonists Society, nominee for Best International Programme in the BAFTA Children’s Awards

•Corporate clients include Nike, Microsoft, Gatorade, Mercedes-Benz, Kodak and Capitol Records.

•Phi Beta Kappa graduate of UCLA (communications major)

•An active role on the national lecture circuit of design colleges and conferences

•Pitches to Nickelodeon, characters for National Cancer Institute and USA Today’s television series

•Created the artwork for the board game Cranium, the fastest selling independent board game in history

•Disney plans a release of a feature film version of “Teachers Pet” this year

•This will be Baseman’s fourth solo show and his first time exhibiting in the Twin Cities

The Gary Baseman show will be the third offering from the folks at OX-OP. On March 1st, 2003, OX-OP art gallery opened its doors and kicked off its first Big Bang group show to a crowd reminiscent of a Tokyo subway at rush hour. Next month brought up and coming graffiti artist Dalek’s “space monkeys” to the Twin Cities. OX-OP is at the forefront of a unique art movement that has quietly been shaking the foundation of the established art world with a potent brew of Low Brow, underground comix, pixel, rock posters, graphic design, and of course graffiti art. All broiling together to create an as-yet unnamed 21st century art movement. Gallery owner/curator Tom Hazelmyer has a knack for spotting up and comers, as those who had the chance to see Shag at back in 2000 (when he was brought in by Hazelmyer at Grumpy’s City Club) This being prior to Shags 2002 opening night sell out show at N.Y.C.’ s Earl McGrath Gallery.

Art Dealer

Art Attack on the Suburbs-Grumpy’s Art Unveiling Party
Aesthetic Apparatus-"2nd Annual Kindling & Litter-Box-Liner Sale"
"Rome is Burning/The New School"
Aesthetic Apparatus-"The Official Aesthetic Apparatus Kindling & Litter-Box-Liner Sale"
Gary Baseman- "MOD Manifestations Of Desire"
Mark Mothersbaugh-"Postcard Diaries"
Gary Taxali-"Chumpy's Specials"
Nathan Jurevicius-"Tunnel Vision"
Shepard Fairey "Visual Disobedience"
Jaime Hayon: "Mon Cirque"
Derek Hess: "Descent from Grace"
Shag-"Push Your Luck"
Billy Childish-Paintings, Prints, Poetry & Performance
Kii Arens-"The Yard Sale"
Burlesque of North America: First Blood, Part III
"Triangulated Fire" paintings by Naoto Hattori, Ryan Kelly & Chris Ryniak
BuffMonster-"Dulces Locos"
Dalek- "The Return of the Space Monkey"
Yumiko Kayukawa & Oksana Badrak
Glenn Barr-"New Paintings & Prints"
KRK Ryden-"The Atomic Glob Show"
Camille Rose Garcia-"Works on Paper"
"Qeedrophonic"
Frank Kozik-"All Your Base Are Belong to Us"
Bwana Spoons & Martin Ontiveros "Like Sqeezing Juice from a Stone"
"Rated XX"
Aesthetic Apparatus
George Thompson-"Bachelor of Fine Arts"
Mark Mothersbaugh-"Beautiful Mutants"
Charles S. Anderson Design-"Awful Pretty: Original Art"
Jeff Soto-"Complete Domination"
Dave Burke-"New Paintings"
Tim Biskup-"The Phantom Thread"
Shag-"Tell No One: Paintings and Prints"
Niagara-"Paintings,Prints and General Artistic Mayhem
Shepard Fairey -"Prints and the Revolution"
Gary Baseman-"Open Wounds (and other paintings about vulnerability)"
Dalek-"Two Fingers of Milk"
"Big Bang"