Errol Barron
Opening reception: Saturday, November 7, from 10am - 6pm
Octavia Art Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition, Errol Barron: Reluctant Monuments.
In any landscape there are places and objects of quiet monumentality so ingrained into the scene that they are nearly invisible or regarded only as ordinary or outdated artifacts of the past. Some are small in scale, and some suggest a kind of architectural grandeur mixed with a pathos stemming from their obsolete utility and the evidence they bear of the passage of time. Some, like the abandoned oil rigs in and around the Gulf of Mexico, are poignant reminders of environmental optimism and tragedy.
Primarily encountered on trips around our region, stretching up as far as the delta of northwestern Mississippi and southeastern Arkansas and as far south as the mouth of the Mississippi, these places and objects evoked the curiosity and affection, which prompted this show. The paintings, the result of a labor-intensive technique requiring many layers of color, are intimately sized though they often deal with subjects of great scale.
Trained as an architect and a practicing architect until 2016, Barron now works primarily as a painter. For many years he has taught at the Tulane University School of Architecture and is a Fellow in the American Institute of Architects. In 2012, he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Louisiana Architects Association and in 1995 was awarded the prestigious Gabriel Prize from the Western European Architecture Foundation.
Errol Barron is the author of five books that record his experiences with or in places such as Rome, Paris, New Orleans, Chaing Mai, Thailand, and Tulane University. Errol Barron is a graduate of Tulane and Yale Universities, and his work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally since 1984.