BRIAN DAILEY: WORDS: A Global Conversation

January 19, 2020

Baahng Gallery is pleased to present WORDS: A Global Conversation, Brian Dailey’s creative summation of 7-year odyssey (2012-2019) that took him to 120 countries. Working in an international geopolitical landscape undergoing tumultuous and historic changes over the evolution of this project, Dailey visited public and private venues on all 7 continents. The exhibition is the inauguralof the project in its entirety and showcases WORDS MULTIMEDIA installation and WORDS ON WORDS, a 13 lenticular- print series. This exhibition is Dailey’s second solo show with the gallery and will run from February 11 thru March 17, 2020, accompanied with opening reception on Tuesday, February 11, 6-8pm, and Artist Talk on March 3, Tuesday, 5:30pm.

WORDS is the artist’s investigation into the impact of globalization and its effect on key human structures of language, society, culture, and environment.In each country, Dailey set up his camera with green-screen backdrop and invited random individuals. Participants were asked 13 words in their native languages: peace, war, love, environment, freedom, religion, democracy, government, happiness, socialism, capitalism, future, and United States. Each person responded—in a single word—with a first impression andselected a background flag reflecting his or her societal allegiance. WORDS MULTIMEDIA is a time-based artand engages the viewers in present day issues while invoking a communal sense among global citizens. In WORDS on WORDS, distinct single-word responses are layered in an immeasurable array of colors enhanced by the lenticular 3D effect. Interjecting his voice in a collaborative manner with the project’s participants, Dailey creates iconoclastic yet playful statements reminiscent of Dada and Surrealist word play.

Born 1951 in California, Brian Dailey earned MFA from Otis Art Institute in 1975 and Ph.D. from University of Southern California in 1987 and participated in the pioneering creative experimentation defining the prolific artistic milieu in California in this era. His early career launched him on a path that—before his full circle back to his arts in 2008—took him through a twenty-year interlude working on arms control and international security. These unusual experiences were a fertile source of inspiration in his idiosyncratic art practice. With dual citizenship of USA and New Zealand, He lives and works in the Washington D.C. and in Woodstock, Virginia. His selected solo exhibitions include at Katzen Arts Center, American University Museum in Washington D.C., in 2018 and his mid-career retrospective at Bulgaria’s National Art Gallery in Sofia in 2014. The evocative videoJIKAI was screened on multiple synchronized monitors in New York City in February, 2014, as the featured video in the Times Square Midnight Moment series; a project of ART PRODUCTION FUND. Brian Dailey is represented by Baahng Gallery.

Brian Dailey

WORDS: A Global Conversation

A solo exhibition by Brian Dailey

February 11 – March 17, 2020

Opening reception

6-8PM, Tuesday February 11, 2020

Artist Talk:

5:30PM, Tuesday March 3, 2020

Brian Dailey, WORDS ON WORDS

WORDS on WORDS, 2019

Set of 13, Solos, Lenticular Prints 20 x 40 in, 24 x 48 in
50.8 x 101.6 cm, 70 x 122 cm edition of 25 plus 5AP’s each unique

WORDS on WORDS, a print series of the project, comprises 13 lenticular works. Distinct single-word responses derived from the answers of the more than 3000 participants in the project are layered throughout the panels in an immeasurable array of colors enhanced by the 3D effect. Interjecting his voice in a collaborative manner with the project’s participants from 134 countries, the artist combined these individual answers into two- or three-word phrases to create iconoclastic yet playful statements reminiscent of Dada and Surrealist word play.

Brian Dailey, Tous les Mots

Tous les Mots, 2018
Inkjet on museum etching paper 13 solos each unique
18 x 22 in
46 x 58.5 cm
edition of 25 plus 5AP’s

Tous les Mots, is a play on the French expression tous les monde, which in its most literal sense translates as all the people in the world. By interjecting the French word for words—mots—it creates a double entendre highlighting both the global and individual voice of the project. The series encapsulates the very essence of this series in that every word uttered by the nearly 3,000 participants is represented in one of the prints corresponding to each of the thirteen words. This print series gives voice to each and every individual who engaged in the WORDS endeavor, the various responses were calibrated and scaled to reflect the frequency in which they were articulated – forming dynamic word clouds.