Divine

While still a student at Atlanta College of Art, Bailey became known for ambitiously layered and graphically complex paintings. He is now widely recognized for experimentation in diverse media: his practice includes sculptures, paintings, installations, works on paper, glass works, and modified found objects, and his approach combines appropriated materials with hand-wrought treatment. Bailey composes this large-scale work around the commanding central photograph of an African Chokwe chief figure, painted and collaged with elements that carry the weight of cultural and personal memory. Overdrawn with exuberant color, Bailey’s elegant green tangle is wrought like a root system, or tree branches, or evidence of divination. The piece includes sheet music, tobacco leaves, pictures of the cosmos, and pages from a 1977 volume of slave testimonies. The entire surface is thickly lacquered to look improbably wet, heavy, and lustrous.