John Baldessari

Brain/Cloud (Two Views): with Palm Tree and Seascape, 2009
foam, paint, resin, aluminum, video camera, projector, inkjet prints on vinyl
Brain/Cloud: 111 ½ x 159 ½ x 54 inches (283 x 405 x 137 cm)

John Baldessari's Brain/Cloud (Two Views): with Palm Tree and Seascape looks forward and backward at once, in a sculptural iteration of cloud imagery developed by the artist in the 1960s and 70s. An enormous, wall-mounted relief of a cerebral cortex, the work exemplifies Baldessari's proposition that physical features, when seen in isolation or unembodied, become newly strange, abstract, and morph into other things. In the artist’s words, “a brain can look like a cloud if you manipulate it in the right way.” Baldessari considers Brain/Cloud a hybrid form: part sculpture and part painting. 

Brain/Cloud was produced for Baldessari’s traveling career retrospective. In the exhibition at the Tate Modern in London, the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, it was installed adjacent to wall-sized photographs of palm trees and ocean vistas. Additionally, a time-delay, black-and-white video projecting viewers as they faced the brain just 30 seconds earlier. 
 
Exhibited
John Baldessari: Pure Beauty, Tate Modern 2009; Museo d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2010; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2010; Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2010

Media
Watch a Vernissage TV walkthrough of the Tate Moderne Pure Beauty exhibition.

 
About the Artist
John Baldessari (b. 1931, National City, CA) attended San Diego State University and did post-graduate work at Otis Art Institute, Chouinard Art Institute and the University of California at Berkeley. He taught at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, CA from 1970 - 1988 and the University of California at Los Angeles from 1996 - 2007.

Baldessari's artwork has been featured in more than 200 solo exhibitions and in over 1000 group exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe. His practice also includes artist books, videos, films, billboards and public works. Recent projects include the traveling career retrospective John Baldessari: Pure Beauty (2009-2011), and release of the John Baldessari Catalogue Raisonné, Volumes 1-3, with Yale University Press.