Additional Images

Provenance:

Private Collection, Toronto

Note:

Mike Bayne’s (b.1977) pictures show a continued interest in scrutinising everyday experience. He focuses on points of interest encountered on the side of the (typically Canadian) street that are characterised by their banality: motels and bungalows, overgrown trees and dying businesses, telephone poles and busted signage are all subjects which Bayne treats with secular reverence. Cheaper Super is an excellent example of his approach, taking its title from the hastily arranged advertisement that it depicts. Dominated by a white sky and evacuated of people, the space is filled by the text; disconnected from the unseen gas station, we are left to contemplate their significance ourselves. The diminutive size of the panel demonstrates his remarkable use of detail: it’s only on closer inspection that the brushstrokes are discernible. By reproducing vernacular subjects with such painstaking acuity, he carefully elevates these ignored subjects with a sense of immediacy and realness. Precise and highly finished, Bayne’s paintings render fleeting landscapes that are on the decline but perennially relatable.