Robert Bain

For several years now I've been interested in the labor of painting, free from any narrative or didactic intent. What is the content of painting when the subject is essentially empty of meaning, and is it possible for that work to avoid the mere negation of meaning, but to instead become an affirmation of the value of the labor of painting?
So these are some of the paintings I've made. They begin as automatic drawings done during meetings, like the doodles one used to do while talking on the phone, before you could use the phone while buying groceries. I remember as a boy finding small drawings next to the phone at my grandparents’ home, which I now recognize as my earliest exposure to abstraction. My attempts to recreate them always failed, even though they seemed so simple.

The best doodles, it turns out, require distraction. Only a mild disinterest, a divided mind, can doodle well. So now I begin paintings when I should be doing something else. They start as inconsequential marks free from the weight of meaning, which are then treated as formal studies. Thus they are transferred faithfully to painting surfaces, creating frameworks for the construction of paintings that are rooted not in a desire to convey a narrative content...

2004 MFA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
2002 Post- Baccalaureate certificate, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
1995 B.A. in Fine Arts, San Francisco State University, Cum Laude

Solo exhibitions
2017 I Learned It From A Book (Works by Robert Bain), SideCar Gallery
2014 Robert Bain, Southport Grocery
2002 Shift/ shift, solo exhibition, DuPreau Gallery, Chicago, IL
New Works, solo exhibition, Lucky Horse Gallery, Chicago, IL
Group exhibitions
2016 Dude...Heavy, South of the Tracks Gallery, Chicago, IL
2006 Robert Bain, Emmett Kerrigan, and Kristin Komar, Chicago Art Source

2004 MFA Thesis Exhibition, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Chicago 11. Melvin Art Gallery, Florida Southern Art Gallery, Lakeland, FL

2003 Parson Consulting- Creativity in the Workplace organized by the Office of Development and the Department of Exhibitions and Events

2002 Modest Proposals- Paintings of Robert Bain and David Corbett
Gallery 645, Chicago, IL
Post- Baccalaureate Thesis Exhibition School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Wow! Pure Fever, 1926 Exhibition studies space, Chicago, IL
Inaugural exhibition. Gallery 645, Chicago, IL

2000 New Works, Robert Bain & Mark Schwartzberg
Lucky Horse Gallery, Chicago, IL

1998 Studio Fifteen, recent paintings by Robert Bain, Steven Lee, and Timothy Webb, Sanchez Art Center, Pacifica, CA

1997 ETC. Artists. Photo Metro, S...