Mowry Baden

Born in Los Angeles in 1936 and educated at Pomona College and Stanford University, Mowry Baden has lived and worked in Canada since 1971. He has practiced sculpture for nearly 50 years and has taught sculpture at Raymond College, Pomona College, UBC, and the University of Victoria, from which he retired in 1997.

Articulating an internal awareness of movement has always been the most important element in his work. Over the past 43 years, he has developed various methods of decentering vision and interfering with habitual human gestures. He has built harnesses, furniture, rooms, pathways and catwalks, all with the goal of impinging upon the viewer’s movements and awakening a physical self-awareness that was previously unconscious.

 

Dromedrary Mezzanine

1991
191cm x 163cm x 201cm (h); four wall-mounted components ea. 76cm x 66cm x 76cm (h)
steel, rubber, aluminum, fabric
Collection of Pomona College Museum of Art
Claremont, California

Baden tries to provoke a perceptual crisis that assaults the viewer’s confidence in the information that comes through the senses. His practice has always involved materials, just like any artist who makes objects. Ideally, however, he is less interested in the object than in the experience. He wants the viewer to enter the object (or the space) and have an experience that is visceral, internal, and sensorially cross-circuited.

Canadian representation: Diaz Contemporary

Link to Mowry Baden website

 

(top and bottom image)

Marsupial

2013
205 cm x 76 cm x 213 cm H
Steel, aluminum, fabric, rubber
Collection of the artist
Victoria BC

My two cents: I am a fan of Mowry Baden’s work. His work is a genuine exploration of movement and perception as it relates to the  human body within its given context. His interactive sculptures not only “provoke a perceptual crisis” but as well, interrupt familial/visceral relationships between body, object and space. I recommend you check out his work.