Stephen Batura : Borrowing Time

Robischon Gallery presents Colorado artist Stephen Batura's solo exhibition entitled "Borrowing Time" featuring large- scale paintings on canvas and panel as well as intimate drawings and watercolors. This extensive showing continues the artist's decade-long painting project; a series based on the historic photographs of Charles Lillybridge circa 1900.

Anchored in the past yet revived in the present, "Borrowing Time" reflects Batura's contextual concerns related to Lillybridge which have ranged from images of everyday life to the grand spectacle of natural and man-made disasters. Batura's painterly abstractions recapture these moments out of time while illuminating a unique connection to the past. The artist's distinctive atmospheric painting approach skillfully translates and transforms Lillybridge's otherwise documental imagery into re-invigorated territory making it both somehow familiar and otherworldly. The slightly out-of-focus or off-kilter views distilled by Batura from Lillybridge's photographs put forth an enigmatic, spectral narrative that blurs temporal realities. While the artist's series based on Lillybridge's photographs culminates to some degree in this exhibition with work that relies on appropriation, Batura's plans for the remaining two years of the project will unfold in an as-yet-to-be-determined style still informed by Lillybridge. However, Stephen Batura's revealing and deliberate brush strokes - which often spans the use of a subtle monochromatic palette and an unexpected use of bold color - remain constant. In Batura's hands, images of the landscape are overtly revitalized as he makes immediate a renewed view of life in the West.

Stephen Batura is a Denver painter who received his B.F.A. from the University of Colorado. He has been recognized through several public commissions including a 30 by 25 foot lobby mural at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House in the historic Auditorium Theater. Additionally, the artist's other most notable public art projects include a Red Rocks Amphitheater Visitor's Center mural and the Lowry Trios, a 12-panel installation at the Schlessman branch of the Denver Public Library and an 8 by 24 foot mural in LoDo's Union Station. The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver featured Batura's extensive solo exhibition "middle ground" in 2003 and The Denver Art Museum has included his work in the permanent collection. Other exhibitions of note include "The Show" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico and "The Wild West" at the Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen, Denmark.