Merging the authentic signifiers of abstraction, the reproducibility of pop, and the graphic starkness of design, John Bauer’s canvases set up planes where visual language is refracted, confused, and reconstructed into disjointed, antagonistic compositions. Beginning each painting with a low-tech computer drawing, Bauer develops his work through a complicated process incorporating hands-off painting techniques such as stenciling, silk-screening and spraying that translate digitized graphics towards sublime fields of painterly abstraction. The concentration of his replicated gestures aggregate as veneers of suggestive descriptions, as if condensing multiple film frames into one overall composition. Alluding to external environment as much as internal psychological state, Bauer uses the monochromatic palette associated with photography and the pixilated effect of print media to heighten the sense of virtuality and information overload. His images exude a frenetic, apocalyptic energy reflective of urban experience.