Opening Reception: Friday, November 7, 2014, 8:00 to 11:00 pm
Artist's Talk: Friday, November 7, 2014, 8:00 pm
Exhibition continues through December 19, 2014

The work of Jozef Bajus has always utilized media whose shared material aspect is flexibility. This has predominantly centered around various kinds of fabric and paper that are invariably manipulated through a variety of physical approaches—in particular, cutting and folding. At its heart, Bajus' practice is using an elementary crafting process, but his treatment of this method and these materials has rarely been simplistic.

In recent years, the inherently exploratory nature of this process has expanded in scale and ambition, as though the artist were on a path to discover the ultimate parameters of such means. While he continues to make some works that are personal and discreet in scale (which reiterates the tactile, handmade nature of the work), he has simultaneously expanded the scale and implications of his sculptural explorations.

With Bajus, two dimensions seem to always suggest three dimensions and pattern is not employed as a decorative device but as an adventurous and exploratory path. His works are rarely predictable and their perpetual variety is a clue pointing to Bajus' insatiable pursuit of new forms and unexpected meanings. He has most recently begun to employ more than paper and fabric, to include industrial and commonplace materials as flexible components of his practice.

In the past, his work was often modest in size, personal and even precious. But alongside his use of new materials, Bajus has become increasingly interested in physical space and site-specificity, as though the flexible forms he is producing are seeking their most comfortable space, their most natural-seeming home. The forms he has always used have grown in scale, providing a newly-dynamic aspect to the longevity of his practice.

For his exhibition at Hallwalls, Bajus will be producing new, large-scale works that extend this internal conversation of exploration and the search for new visual languages within familiar, sometimes even commonplace, materials.

Jozef Bajus is Associate Professor of Design and Coordinator of Fiber/Design Program at Buffalo State College. In 1985 he received his MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava (Slovakia). He is an award-winning fiber and mixed media artist, and recently received the 2008 Esprit de Corps Award in category artist, Burchfield - Penney Art Center in Buffalo and President's Award for Excellence in Research, Scholarship, and Creativity 2008, BSC, Buffalo.

Bajus' work has been exhibited worldwide, including Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Japan, Korea, USA and Canada. His recent one-person show The Combing Wave - Recent Works - was on display in 2008 at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery - Collectors Gallery in Buffalo. Curved Circle, a one-person show, was in 2006 at Buffalo Art Studio in Buffalo, NY and in the Museum & Art Gallery of Koloman Sokol in Liptovsky Mikulas, Slovakia (Summer 2006).

Bajus taught fiber workshops at the American Craft Museum, NYC in 2001, Penland School of Art and Craft in 2005, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in 2007 and 2010, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in 2000 and 2008, and Split Rock in 2009.

Bajus' artworks are in numerous collections including the Moravian Art & Craft Museum in Brno, Czech Republic, Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava, Slovakia, Racine Art Museum in Wisconsin, Gregg Museum of Art & Design in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo, New York. Jozef Bajus' artworks are included also in private collections in Europe, USA and Canada.

www.jozefbajus.com