Bret Acker/Artist Statement
Bret Aaker was born in Vietnam in 1967 and lived in Central America before moving to the United States in
1977. He received his B.A. from The Evergreen State College in visual arts in 1990. Currently he lives in Albuquerque, New
Mexico where he continues to paint, sculpt and exhibit. Most recently he has shown at
Arte Loca,
Katrina Lasko Gallery and
AC2 (Albuquerque Contemporary Art
Center).
In January of 2002 I started to build a studio on the side of my house. It started as a rundown carport with a dirt floor and a couple of walls made out of adobe bricks. The roof leaked and one of the walls was badly eroded. Over the next year I slowly transformed the carport into a workshop. During that year I was also employed at a studio called Art Street, which is a program of Health
Care for the Homeless. I was able to work on my art projects there while my studio was being built. At the end of the winter of 2003 I began working in my studio.
In October of 2003 I went to visit the newly opened Dia Beacon museum and was floored by the Robert Ryman paintings that are on exhibit there. I looked at those paintings until my eyes hurt, and then I looked some more. Those paintings are so sparse and open that they barely exist, until you notice how they were made. I was inspired to explore the “how” a piece of art is made. That’s when I started
painting directly onto wood, specifically birch plywood, and leaving some of the painting “bare” so that the grain of the wood becomes an important element. I also paid closer attention to the sides of the painting treating the whole thing as an object. I also began layering paint and scratching and rubbing into the paint. My attention to material was becoming the content of the work. After a couple of
months working in this style I started to burn lines into the wood with a hobby wood burner. This opened up a door into a new space that I’m still exploring today. I’ve always loved drawing and using the burner made drawing a long drawn out process. Since the drawing is in slow motion I can look forward and have plenty of time to calculate my next move.
I’m currently exploring two ways of painting. One is splitting the space between an almost empty color field and a carefully composed line burning, usually involving furniture and architectural constructs. These I pencil in using a ruler before I burn them. The other way is to approach the painting intuitively and let the burn line flow without much preconception, just making sure there’s a certain
balance to the whole composition. These end up looking like figures of some sort. When the figure is done I paint a ground around it with one solid color.
Digital Series
The digital photographs are a series called Hyper-Fake. On first observation one might be fooled into thinking the subject is “real” but on closer inspection they are obviously miniature plastic models. The objects reside in a world of enigmatic theater, akin to models in a wax museum, except the context is askew; there is no defined place to
understand them. The work is so fake that it starts becoming something other than what is obviously depicted. To make the digital photograph I construct a scene using HO scale models, which I get, from hobby stores. While constructing the scene I have a specific perspective in mind. I then light the scene using a variety of light sources such as led lights, daylight lamps, and flashlights. Then I shoot
the scene several times, using a digital camera, making small adjustments to the lighting and perspective. From the 15 or so shots I pick the strongest one and delete the rest. I then have the digital file enlarged, laminated, and mounted. Each digital print is in a set of four. Bret Aaker Albuquerque April 2005
Bret Aaker
May 2004
Albuquerque
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