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Cliff Baldwin "#4958," 2018. Acrylic on canvas, 48” x 48." COURTESY THE ARTIST
“Cliff Baldwin: In All Languages,” an exhibition of paintings, films, and prints will be on view at the Suffolk County Community College Eastern Campus’ Lyceum Gallery from September 4 through October 19. There will be a reception for the artist on Thursday, September 12, from 4 to 6 p.m. Refreshments will be served, and all are welcome to attend.
Cliff Baldwin is an interdisciplinary artist with a practice that spans painting, printmaking, sculpture, film, music and design. Baldwin is fascinated by languages that cross cultural boundaries. In his exhibit, “In All Languages,” Baldwin will display multiple forms of universal language. First are his nonverbal protest or parade signs that silently holler the language of art for a rally in the name of color and pure form. Complete with handles one may parade with them affirming colorist beauty and pleasing shapes.
Additionally, Baldwin has found that the fruit and vegetable stickers that inadvertently wind up on one’s elbow after working in the kitchen contain an international language that includes colors, pictures, and tiny barcode or QR symbols that convey their growers’ locations and messages such as “Dragon Fruit” or “Mango.” On display are Baldwin’s 5 x 4 foot paintings of these colorful fruit labels. He also delves into “Esperanto,” a language developed in the late 1800s by Russian scholar J.J. Zamenhof, which has become one of the world’s most widely spoken universal second languages. Originally developed to create a world without war through intercultural dialogue, Baldwin has adopted Esperanto to create his wood-cut printed banners installed on a clothesline with phrases that translate to “Yes, You.”
Today living in Aquebogue, Cliff Baldwin is originally from Salem, Massachusetts. He received his bachelor of fine arts degree from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1982. Baldwin’s language-based books and prints are in the collections of the MoMA, The Brooklyn Museum, the San Francisco MoMA, the Whitney Museum and more. In 1983, Baldwin founded the oversized broadsheet art publication Aqui. From 1989 to 1995, Baldwin exhibited large scale installations with Fluxus artist Davi Det Hompson in a neo-Fluxus word art duo called Baldwin+Hompson.
His collaborations in 1995 to 2005 with downtown composer Mikel Rouse produced three groundbreaking video operas that toured internationally.
In 2014, Baldwin created ACME, a music ensemble devoted to presenting new music and historic cinema. ACME preformed at the Rites of Spring Music Festival from 2016 to 2019 on the East End. Baldwin’s films and videos have appeared in many venues including the 2010 and 2012 InLight Festival in Richmond, Virginia and at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill in 2015. In 2017, he exhibited his work, “House of Fubb,” a robotically fabricated pavilion built at the Center for New Art at William Paterson College. In 2020, Baldwin created an outdoor sound and video mix at the Custer Institute and Observatory in Southold.
Baldwin founded and curated the Harvest Arts Festival at the 1731 Jamesport Meeting House in 2018, where he later curated a suite of historic silent films with live accompaniment that included Baldwin as saxophonist in 2023.
The Lyceum Gallery is located in the Montaukett Building at Suffolk County Community College Eastern Campus, 121 Speonk Riverhead Road, Riverhead. Call 631-548-2536 for more information.
Staff Writer on Aug 28, 2024