PHILADELPHIA, PA.- Pentimenti Gallery presents Steven Baris: The Smoothest of All Possible Space, the artist’s fourth solo exhibition at Pentimenti Gallery.

A mixed media show ranging from oil on canvas, oil on mylar, acrylic on plexiglass, archival print, and installation. Each piece is in response to our expanding industrial and consumer landscape and the contraction of our rural, naturally open spaces.

“Pockets of former fields and forests are rapidly transforming into constellations of massive horizontal buildings known as “distribution” or “fulfillment” centers.” These structures provide Steven Baris the opportunity and the geometric vocabulary to speak about the forces at play behind their growth while also speaking about their physical location in regards to the ease in which their inventory can be distributed to the consumer as quickly as possible.

Baris has grown up on various American Indian Reservations while his father worked for the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs and has lived in the relatively unpopulated forests and plains in the West. It wasn't until he moved to the Northeast to attend graduate school that he began to realize the impact that these mega-structures made on the fringe areas of larger cities and suburbs. “I was immediately taken by the spatial disorientation I felt driving the expressways through these areas. So much space and so few points of access. So much mobility yet so constricted and channeled.”

The works in this solo exhibition also point to the social responsibility that both the art and artist are charged with. The ability to begin a conversation about aspects of life in a visual format, the meeting of art and it’s content to the people viewing it, and the volume in which their voice is heard in the din of our contemporary arguments.

Steven Baris was born in Aberdeen, Washington. He received his MFA from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. He studied at the Evergreen State College in Olympia and at Instituto Allende, San Miguel de Allende in Mexico.

Since 2005, his work has been represented by Pentimenti Gallery. Baris has exhibited widely in the United States and internationally, in institutions: the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Wilmington, DE; Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA; Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit, NJ; Atelierhof Kreuzberg, Berlin, Germany; INTERNATIONAL BIENNIAL OF NON OBJECTIVE ART, Pont de Claix, France; Kunstlerhaus Dosenfabrik, Hamburg, Germany; Abington Art Center, Abington, PA; Carnegie Mellon University Art Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA; The Drawing Center, New York, NY, and more.

Permanent collections which hold works by the artist include: Canon USA Inc.; Coventry First Insurance Company; HayGroup; Iroko Pharmaceuticals, LLC; Progressive Insurance Company; Texas Tech University; Wilmington Trust; and more. Work included in numerous private collections in North America, Europe and Australia.