Baahng Gallery is pleased to present WORDS: A Global Conversation, Brian Dailey’s creative summation of 7-year odyssey (2012-2019) that took him to 120 countries.  Working in an international geopolitical landscape undergoing tumultuous and historic changes over the evolution of this project, Dailey visited public and private venues on all 7 continents.  The exhibition is the inauguralof the project in its entirety and showcases WORDS MULTIMEDIA installation and WORDS ON WORDS, a 13 lenticular- print series.  This exhibition is Dailey’s second solo show with the gallery and will run from February 11 thru March 17, 2020, accompanied with opening reception on Tuesday, February 11, 6-8pm, and Artist Talk on March 3, Tuesday, 5:30pm. 

WORDS is the artist’s investigation into the impact of globalization and its effect on key human structures of language, society, culture, and environment.In each country, Dailey set up his camera with green-screen backdrop and invited random individuals.  Participants were asked 13 words in their native languages: peace, war, love, environment, freedom, religion, democracy, government, happiness, socialism, capitalism, future, and United States.  Each person responded—in a single word—with a first impression andselected a background flag reflecting his or her societal allegiance.  WORDS MULTIMEDIA is a time-based artand engages the viewers in present day issues while invoking a communal sense among global citizens.  In WORDS on WORDS, distinct single-word responses are layered in an immeasurable array of colors enhanced by the lenticular 3D effect. Interjecting his voice in a collaborative manner with the project’s participants, Dailey creates iconoclastic yet playful statements reminiscent of Dada and Surrealist word play. 

Born 1951 in California, Brian Dailey earned MFA from Otis Art Institute in 1975 and Ph.D. from University of Southern California in 1987 and participated in the pioneering creative experimentation defining the prolific artistic milieu in California in this era.  His early career launched him on a path that—before his full circle back to his arts in 2008—took him through a twenty-year interlude working on arms control and international security.  These unusual experiences were a fertile source of inspiration in his idiosyncratic art practice. With dual citizenship of USA and New Zealand, He lives and works in the Washington D.C. and in Woodstock, Virginia.  His selected solo exhibitions include at Katzen Arts Center, American University Museum in Washington D.C., in 2018 and his mid-career retrospective at Bulgaria’s National Art Gallery in Sofia in 2014. The evocative videoJIKAI was screened on multiple synchronized monitors in New York City in February, 2014, as the featured video in the Times Square Midnight Moment series; a project of ART PRODUCTION FUND. Brian Dailey is represented by Baahng Gallery. 

Baahng Gallery is pleased to announce representation of Brian Dailey and the presentation of his first solo exhibition in the gallery, Polytropos. The exhibition features selected works from 2010 to 2018 and debuts to a New York audience his most recent monumental project WORDS, an expansive global video installation engaging with issues of language and identity under globalization.

Based in Washington D.C., Dailey is an artist whose work in a range of media, including photography, film, installations, and painting, draws on his unconventional evolution as an artist and reflects pressing concerns of our times. His conceptual and performance based art expands the parameters in which he works, defying easy categorization

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Perhaps no word better characterizes Dailey than polytropos, the first adjective Homer applies to Odysseus in The Odyssey. Translated from the Greek as well traveled, much wandering, and, in a more metaphorical sense, as the man of many twists and turns, polytropos suitably describes Dailey’s life journey. His many peregrinations have taken him from his art studies and career in Los Angeles in the 1970s to a twenty-year interlude working on arms control and international security, ultimately bringing him full circle back to his roots as an artist. These unusual experiences, which he approached with the same curiosity that has driven his art, provide a fertile source of inspiration in his idiosyncratic creative practice. 

Dailey’s multifaceted background is reflected in works in the exhibition such as the meditative and provocative two- and three-dimensional works from his Lamentations series, a pioneering project that manifests a novel aesthetics of nuclear iconography in post-Cold War and in the elegant and vibrant canvases from his autobiographical 14 Stations at the Crossroads, an engaging series that revisits key moments in the artist’s life journey. Equally reflective of his life experiences are the radiant and intricate digital graphite drawings, Riddles, embedded with compelling multifaceted meanings. Also on view is the dynamic mosaic of photographic portraits from Dailey’s America in Color project, a color-coded time capsule of the myriad faces of the U.S. populace, situated literally and symbolically against a backdrop of the contemporary political landscape. 

Brian Dailey has had solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, New York, Washington, D.C., and Bulgaria, and participated in a number of group shows in the United States, Europe, and Russia. His most recent museum exhibition, WORDS, was held at Katzen Arts Center, American University Museum in Washington D.C. in 2018, and his mid-career retrospective took place at Bulgaria’s National Art Gallery in Sofia in 2014. The evocative video Jikai–which will be on view at the gallery—was screened on multiple synchronized monitors in New York City in February, 2014, as the featured video in the Times Square Midnight Moment series; a project of ART PRODUCTION FUND.