Richard Barnes | Gallery Feature
Richard Barnes | Gallery Feature
July 13-27, 2019
350 Dundas Street W, Toronto
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 13, 2019, 2-4 PM
This July, Bau-Xi Photo is excited to feature Animal Logic, the award-winning series by acclaimed fine art photographer Richard Barnes. Animal Logic reveals the curious beauty of animals being prepared for display in natural history museums. Barnes, who is based in New York, spent over 10 years building this series, cataloging methods of collecting, conserving and exhibiting elements of the natural world. Drawing inspiration from science, history, archaeology, and anthropology, Barnes’ work offers a reminder that there is nothing inherently natural about viewing animals in a museum, an irony that is underscored by photographs that show the care taken to preserve taxidermy specimens, placing them into artificial landscapes, similar to ones they once called home.
Barnes’ work has been shown in solo exhibitions at institutions such as the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the Carpenter Center at Harvard University, the Cranbrook Art Museum, and the University of Michigan Art Museum. He has lectured at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, Parsons School of Art and Design, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; he has taught at the California College or the Arts, and has served as an adjunct professor at the San Francisco Art Institute.
His works can be found in numerous public and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, The Cleveland Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. He is the recipient of the prestigious Julius Schulman Award for 2011. He was previously a recipient of the Rome Prize 2005-2006 and his photographs of the cabin of Ted Kaczynski, aka the "Unabomber," were featured in the 2006 Whitney Biennial and awarded the Alfred Eisenstadt Award for Photography.