Henry Ballate, Avoir l'apprenti dans le soleil I, 2018, acrylic on  canvas, 30 x 30"

The four pieces are like an etude on what Ballate sees as a conversation with conceptual artist legend Marcel Duchamp, whose “Nude Descending a Staircase” won acclaim at the 1913 New York Armory Show. Duchamp also famously exhibited a signed urinal, which he called “Fountain,” at the 1917 Society of Independent Artists in New York. In Ballate’s four-piece graphic work, Duchamp’s silhouetted profile looms large in dialogue, perhaps other worldly, with Ballate’s own silhouette, seen as a tiny man in the corner.

Pam Harbaugh