Basie Allen uses poetry and painting to explore the space between living in cities and being in nature. Through a process of layering written text, paint, décollage, and transfer, Allen experientially mimics the sensation of putting on boots and walking into a landscape. The work is accentuated by cultural and personal identity, memory, and gestural abstraction.
Allen’s use of carpentry and the grid brings his work into direct communication with the city itself through ideas of the architecture of form. By painting on his own camping tarps and then transferring the image onto muslin and linen, Allen is metaphorically and literally pulling from his past, asking the viewer to wonder, “Is nature a bigoted term?” His work attempts to deepen this question.
His work has been exhibited at Eric Firestone (2024), V1 (Copenhagen, 2024), MoMA PS1 (Queens, 2023), Massimodecarlo (Milan, 2022), Olympia (NYC, 2021), and Marlborough Contemporary (NYC, 2018). Art fairs include The Armory Show ( NYC 2024) and NADA (Miami 2024). EXPO (Chicago 2024) He’s been an artist in residency at Modern ancient Brown (Detroit 2022) and Mount Lebanon (NY 2019).
b. 1989, New York, New York
Lives and works in Mexico City, Mexico
