I characterize my work as diagrammatic, a far more apt term than the nearly meaningless category of abstraction or even geometric abstraction. It is not that my work is meant to look like conventional diagrams; rather I deploy similar visual vocabularies that I describe as “performative geometries” to visualize more ineffable features of experience. Essentially, diagrams are graphic displays that map otherwise invisible temporal processes and space-time relationships. This is precisely what I aim to achieve in my paintings.
The series, Stations of Attention, is influenced by an intersection of my research into cognition and consciousness and my lifelong interest in Buddhist philosophy. Certainly the most salient feature of consciousness and awareness is attention. These paintings entertain a diagrammatic visualization of attention as a highly fragmented and nonlinear operation, yet one we falsely believe to be otherwise—not so different than when a film slows to fewer than eighteen frames per second, revealing our perception of continuous movement as an illusion.
Steven Baris is the 2024 recipient of the Pollack-Krasner Foundation Grant.