Steve Baris characterizes his paintings as diagrammatic and creates in a persistent attempt to visually define and articulate the amorphous and ineffable processes of everyday life. “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,” says Baris.
In “Stations of Attention,” Baris is concerned with the practice at the heart of his Buddhist belief – the importance of paying attention. As hard as we might try, attention wanders and often gets lost in the millions of daily impressions life imposes.
Baris uses the precise, concrete elements of his unique visual language - opaque circles floating in a vibrating field of lines - to create a diagrammatic visualization of attention as a highly fragmented and nonlinear operation. The paintings reflect that although we believe the act of paying attention is something we can control, we are fooling ourselves.
