Tim Bavington

The End Has No End (for Dave Hickey)

January 6 - February 12, 2022

Opening Reception: “First Thursday,” January 6, 6-8pm

Greg Kucera Gallery is pleased to announce our third one-person exhibition of work by Las Vegas painter, Tim Bavington. In tribute to Bavington’s late friend and mentor, Dave Hickey, the exhibition’s title, The End Has No End (for Dave Hickey), comes from a song of the same name by New York rock band, The Strokes. The artist associates the title with one of Hickey’s favorite koans: “The branch from which the blossom hangs is neither long nor short.”

“Dave argued that all signs (he was speaking about what he called “American semiotics”) carry both designative meanings—these have to do with language and content, and embodied meanings manifested “as word, or color, or a musical note.” While the designative meaning of these paintings references the music transcribed for them, I prioritize the embodied meaning of the works: their color.”
— Tim Bavington

Bavington’s sprayed stripe paintings are typically composed after specific sequences of music. The artist transposes melodies, guitar solos, or bass lines into paint by assigning each note a particular color. Each painting’s palette is produced by combinations of the 12 hue color wheel and the 12 tone scale. The paint is applied with airbrush as vertical bands of color. From a distance the pattern appears hard-edged, perhaps digitally created, but closer inspection reveals softer, blurred edges, similar to one note from a guitar solo bleeding into the next.

Work in exhibition