Simon Bayliss makes luscious paintings that swirl with images grabbing your attention and pushing your eyes around his chosen visual field. Slices of figuration - which connote rather than represent - are connected by rich passages of painterly abstraction or separated by gestural sweeps of the brush which form lines of force that might be national boundaries or rivers or waves or water refracted in a virtual shark tank. The struggle to compose these fragmented elements in combination with dynamic abstract forms constitutes Bayliss' attempts to think and speak through paint. The source of the pictures is whatever chance brings his way, including internet news, available pop culture or art-history. Then whichever alerts his inner eye and can sustain this interest through the ordeals of his developing process stays. Overall meaning accrues along with, and is within, the paint.
Simon Anderson - Associate Professor of Art History Theory and Criticism, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
I remember when I was 18 or so I would go to nightclubs in Manchester and take E or acid and shadows shifting up and down the walls swans, red glass purred me to sleep candle at my mum's ornaments...
The show is a reflection of Liu Bolin's multifaceted and complex view of contemporary society and culture. The critically acclaimed and internationally renowned artist will release the first works of a new series, Hiding in California.
