Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Salzburg is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition of Donald Baechler. NEW BRONZE SCULPTURES will open in the presence of the artist on July 24th, 2008 at 7pm. It is Baechler's 9th solo-show in our gallery since 1994.

Baechler is mainly known for his paintings, collages and bronze sculptures, whereby he always seeks a close connection between works realized in these different media. In our show NEW BRONZE SCULPTURES, which is taking place in our Salzburg gallery's Editions department, Baechler shows a group of bronze figures.

The sculptures were produced exclusively for our exhibition and are each executed in an edition of 15. The charm of classic lost wax technique and the hand-applied patina are details, particularly important to the artist. Hence, under close supervision of the artist, the sculptures were realized in a foundry in Italy, with which Baechler has a long professional relationship.

Since the beginning of his artistic career up until today, the human figure is a persistent theme in Baechler's work. In the late 1980s he developed an almost obsessive interest in painting flowers. Among other recurring motives are globes, ice-cream cones and bars, candy, suitcases, various different birds, Christmas trees, beach balls, musical instruments and pieces of furniture.

Faces and figures are important subjects in Baechler's sculptural work. This also became strongly perceptible in his exhibition at the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg (2004). Whereas previously he has tended to exhibit his sculptures in front of paintings depicting the same theme, it was in the show of 2004 where Baechler chose for the first time to exhibit the sculptures just by themselves. Our exhibition continues this focus of Baechler's work on the medium of sculpture.

Baechler counts Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol amongst those artists who had a profound influence on him in his early years. Later it was the work of Joseph Kosuth and Cy Twombly that made an important impact on Donald Baechler's vision of art.

Baechler was born in Hartford (Connecticut) in 1956. He studied from 1974 until 1977 at the Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore, 1977/78 at Cooper Union, New York City, and 1978/79 at the Hochschule für bildende Künste (Städelschule) in Frankfurt am Main. He taught at the Salzburg Summer Academy in 2004.

Baechler lives and works in New York. Since the beginning of the 1980s he exhibited widely in New York and internationally. His sculptures and paintings are represented in many public and private collections, such as the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art and Guggenheim-Museum (all in New York), in the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.