Don Baum: Re-Visiting the Brilliance of a Legend

Don Baum: Re-Visiting the Brilliance of a Legend, January 5 – February 3, 2007 at Carl Hammer Gallery in Chicago, IL. "...Carl Hammer Gallery is honored, once again, to present legendary artist, Don Baum, in an exhibition of art work spanning the past sixty years. Perhaps known best for his Domus series, a body of re-constructed constructions, Baum’s life-long employment of the art of assemblage uniquely and successfully analyzed all of that which makes us human. Combining any number of found objects (dolls, boxes, bread boards, paint-by-number paintings, game boards, etc.), Baum’s vision is often linked to the likes of Joseph Cornell, Louise Bourgeois, H.C. Westermann, and others. But his work is both distinct and different. For Baum, construction techniques were more simply a means to an end than an aspect of content itself. Likewise, sculptural issues are overshadowed in his work by a concern for meaning; formal relationships, while certainly considered, are always secondary to the artist’s preoccupation with the potential for emotive or psychological impact."