Barry Stone

Checking for Loose Limbs, Austin, TX, 10.14.2007
copyright Barry Stone

Barry Stone
Highway 71 Revisited
Klaus Von Nichtssagend Gallery
438 Union Avenue at Metropolitan

January 11 - February 10, 2008
Opening Reception: Friday, January 11, 7-9pm
Artist's Talk: Sunday, January 13, 12-1pm

Coming up on Friday is the opening of Highway 71 Revisited, the second solo exhibition of a friend and former colleague at the ICP, Barry Stone. Barry and his family moved to Texas in August for a teaching position at The University of Texas in San Marcos, and after Christmas, I got a chance to drop in on their new home and get a sneak preview of prints for his exhibition.

For nearly two years, I have been watching Barry's work unfold through his Weekly Picture Archive. And if I were to try to identify what makes his work so captivating, the very first thing that comes to mind is his value system - his love and devotion to his wife, his daughter, and the environments and moments that make up their daily lives. With understated humor, sensitivity and visual poetry, Barry has examined the experiences of a family living in Greenpoint, and then returning to Texas, where Barry was born and raised.

Barry's recent images describe a place this is both surreal and melancholy. A place where trees and skies are sublime and haunting, where people pause under highways, and where a galaxy emerges from flour spilled on a kitchen floor. His images resonate from an attentiveness to uncanny details in the everyday and create a personal narrative that is curious and moving.