Kristin Baker

Kristin Baker (b. 1975, Stamford, Connecticut) is a painter based in New York. She often uses stencil and sign painting techniques on PVC panels.

Baker holds a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts / Tufts University, Boston (1998), and graduated from Yale’s MA Painting programme (2002).

Her work has been exhibited in many prominent international galleries and museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art and PS1 Contemporary Art Centre in New York, the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Royal Academy in London and The Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. Her work is featured in the Saatchi Collection, and she is represented by Deitch Projects, New York.

2003 Flat Out and 2005 Fall Out

Baker’s solo debut in New York, Flat Out, was presented by Deitch Projects in September 2003 and her subsequent Los Angeles debut, Fall Out, was presented by Acme in March 2005. Both exhibitions continued the artist’s interest in auto racing by exploring, “the connection between painting and automobile racing, particularly by the contrast between accident versus control that characterizes both pursuits.”

In Debra Singer’s article for Artforum the work is explained within a cultural context. “ Baker explains that she started to understand racing as a microcosm of American capitalism, given the sport’s inherent ties to technological innovation and corporate sponsorship.” But however specific the subject of auto racing may be, the work still maneuvers itself in the broader sense of painting. Singer explains, “Despite such culturally specific associations, many paintings transform representational details into predominantly formal elements, as in Ride to Live, Live to Ride, 2004. The up-close vantage of a moment immediately following an explosive crash, when smoke clouds the view of drivers and spectators alike, is dominated by vibrant, propulsive shards that radiate outward, interlacing with billowing flows of sooty haze. . The flurry of edges and forms, reminiscent of the ornamental impulse of the 1970s Pattern and Decoration movement, imbues the scene of destruction with a paradoxical, almost floral delicacy, as translucent and opaque layers of paint overlap like scraps of torn tissue, beautiful despite circumstance.”

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