Cay Bahnmiller

Cay Bahnmiller (b. 1955; d. 2007, Detroit, USA) was born in Wayne, Michigan. After spending part of her childhood in Argentina and Germany, Bahnmiller lived and worked in Detroit until her death. Bahnmiller’s art is marked by accumulation: of paint, found objects, texts, memories and even of time. Layered and sedimented, Bahn- miller collapsed temporality, allowing her work to reflect a profu- sion of experience – in all its facets – that can only be accumula- ted through life lived. She worked fluidly across mediums. Making no distinction between surfaces, she built compositions on street signs, books, pages torn from magazines and auction catalogs, found pieces of wood and toys. This openness was offset by her rigorous examination of her approach and subject matter.There is a clarity and intensity of vision that reveals how purposefully and ca- refully Bahnmiller crafted her dense work. She related occurrence through both abstract language and exacting detail. A contradictory thread runs through both Bahnmiller‘s life and her art. Her struggle to reconcile the conflicting sides of her personality was something she grappled with until her death. Works were of- ten made, unmade and made again, showing traces of each stage and the desire to revise and rework. Visceral, unstable and painful, their immediacy is tangible. “In my search for form, the final cons- truction and process often results from negation,” she wrote. True to her belief that “painting is inscription, rather than description,” she used the world of art and its vicissitude – taste, decor, culture, speculation, history – as the literal base of her work, building up layered, totemic, works on magazine pages, auction catalogues, re- staurant stationary, and books by her favorite authors.