Tim Bavington: Feedback

Scott Richards Contemporary Art presents TIM BAVINGTON: FEEDBACK, a collection of large-scale, abstract paintings tuned in to the mathematical and sensual power of rock music. The exhibition continues through March 26, 2016.

Born in England, Tim Bavington has lived in Las Vegas for the past 20 years. He describes his first visit to the incandescent desert town as “mind-blowing”. Maybe it was the pulsating neon signs, the wide-open desert landscapes, or the luminous sunsets, but the atmosphere of Vegas has somehow gotten under this British artist’s skin.

Bavington approaches his optical color-field abstractions with vibrating energy and powerful color combinations. He choses synthetic polymer as medium for its range of intense, bright hues, which he applies to canvas with an airbrush to blur and soften the edges, letting each color dissolve into the next. The glowing colors are laid down side by side in graceful lines and swirls of different widths to create a hypnotic, almost psychedelic, visual experience. Critic Ken Johnson summed up the pleasure of viewing Bavington’s paintings in a recent New York Times review: “Against a morality of Puritan restraint, he asserts an expansive aesthetic of seduction and sensory intoxication”.

Perhaps the most fascinating part of Bavington’s process is his system of weaving musical structure into the paintings. Specific chord arrangements from selected rock-and-roll riffs are “coded” into each composition. In this way, musical tonalities and tempos are translated into a corresponding visual language of rhythmic pattern. His first music painting, a minimal composition of hazy vertical lines, was composed from a Jimi Hendrix guitar solo, “Voodoo Child”, and he has continued to refine and expand his compositions since then.

Bavington received his MFA from the University of Nevada in 1999. He continues to soak up the quirky atmosphere of Las Vegas, particularly “the way the city takes history lightly and is prepared to tear it down.” He has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions across the U.S. and in Europe, and his work can be found in many important private and public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Portland Museum of Art, Portland, OR; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; and the Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR.