Art Pick of the Week

In his latest charcoal drawings, Little Rock-based David Bailin continues to combine the expansive, barren space of his native South Dakota with the narrative intrigue particular to the artistic tradition(s) of the American South. He plants people in fields and marshes, garbage dumps and stands of dead trees, and sets them to work on mundane tasks doing the wash, stacking furniture, pacing which they proceed to do very oddly. One guy pulls a clothesline in a grand arc away from a house or shed, but seems to have nowhere to anchor it, while lady folding the laundry stands in the basket while doing so. A man seems to be digging a grave for a stack of books; another wears a circular path in the soil by walking intently around a lone tree. The burlesque activity is pure Fluxus, but the ambiance is dreamlike and resonates with existential tristesse, as if Bailin were illustrating modern (postmodern?) parables.