Elegy for the Last Republic 026: Did We?, 2018 Painting by Cody Bayne

Painting: Acrylic, Paint, Paper on Paper, Other.

mixed-media: paper, acrylic, latex paint, flashe vinyl paint, gel medium on found merchant poster

Irregularities in surface, form & shape of artwork are true to intent of the piece and speak to the materials used, the innate history of the materials, as well as, the ephemeral qualities of the object and the joy "perceived flaws" present in new context as perfection.

This work comes from a on-going body of work entitled "Elegies of the Last Republic" a direct nod to the seminal body of work by Robert Motherwell.
Motherwell described the Elegies as his "private insistence that a terrible death happened that should not be forgot. But," he added, "the pictures are also general metaphors of the contrast between life and death, and their interrelation."
My works extends this notion into the current day and expands not only upon the interrelation of life and death but serves to admonish those who so readily forget the past & questions if it is even "in the past" but more so a state of infinite repetition.

Cody Bayne is the creator who coined the term Neo-Urban Expressionism. His work has been compared with the key artists of the 20th century - Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol - who made new meaning of contemporary culture and forged new individualized visual languages .
Cody has been featured by Saatchi Art's Chief Curator for their most prestigious feature, Invest In Art series in 2016