Rush Baker IV’s abstractions interleave the visual ephemera of Civil War-era photography, maps, and print media with layers of pigment, resin, and plaster in a collision of translucent and solid materials. Underlying Baker’s plastic surfaces is visual data sourced from depictions of the Civil War era battles of Charleston, Atlanta, and Gettysburg. Over the last decade, Baker has addressed socio-political themes through abstraction, and abstraction itself through a reassessment of influences and materials. Baker’s paintings offer a matrixed view of our current political climate – capturing the explosive environment of the twenty-first century through abstract painting elements – and contrasting it with highly stylized graphic depictions from the nineteenth.
Landscapes is Baker’s third solo exhibition with HEMPHILL Artworks since 2016.
Rush Baker IV (American, Born, 1987) received a BFA from The Cooper Union for Advancement of Science and Art in 2009 and an MFA from Yale University in 2012. He was recently awarded the 2024-25 Grant Wood Fellowship at The Grant Wood Art Colony of the University of Iowa, which will culminate in an exhibition in Spring 2025. Baker’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and is represented in numerous private and institutional collections, including the International African American Museum, Charleston, SC, The Phillips Collection, Washington DC, and The Studio Museum in Harlem. Baker lives and works in Hyattsville, MD.