Dennis Balk
Shards & Splinters
Galerie Pepe is pleased to present Shards & Splinters —The Al-Wehdat Suite— an exhibition by artist Dennis Balk (b. 1952, Des Moines, IA). November 7th, 2025 - January 17th, 2026
Several years back, I landed on the idea that cultural aesthetics are composed and operate within quantum space, like consciousness receptors, with particles being the impetus for expression. It was the story of a theory, a narrative to mine.
The Al-Wehdat Suite is painted pictures as causal scenarios from the time I spent making photographic portraits—with the signature white sheet of Avedon—in Al-Wehdat, the Palestinian refugee camp in the Kingdom of Jordan. Later that day, I found myself in the office of the Minister of Security for the Kingdom, a very attractive, funny, and gracious man. Transactions in that office are, of course, private. 2005.
In collision, so the story goes, the fragments explode into discrete shards and splinters that reprise the terror of being exposed.
The long path, modeling a myriad of transaction events at theoretical scales across multiple continents, drags remnant fragments as its requisite baggage. Meanwhile, career aesthetics are, by necessity, a finite confinement loop.
In particular parts of the aesthetic web, where it can be dangerous, particles of culture have different, darker textures, always the needy reality of metaphor—typically black and white.
Violence and expressions of inhumanity adopt the persona of anonymity.
Aesthetic irony relies on the pieces of the picture's story already being in place; otherwise, there would be no space between the splinters, and what connections would we make? The leaps are always, "How do we get out of here?" and "I'd like to be over there."
Digging around in the fields that our predecessors eked out, one still hopes for magic.
I was born in 1952, in Des Moines, Iowa, on the day Dwight Eisenhower was elected president. 2025: I live in the Blue Ridge of Virginia.
Dennis Balk
Several years back, I landed on the idea that cultural aesthetics are composed and operate within quantum space, like consciousness receptors, with particles being the impetus for expression. It was the story of a theory, a narrative to mine.
The Al-Wehdat Suite is painted pictures as causal scenarios from the time I spent making photographic portraits—with the signature white sheet of Avedon—in Al-Wehdat, the Palestinian refugee camp in the Kingdom of Jordan. Later that day, I found myself in the office of the Minister of Security for the Kingdom, a very attractive, funny, and gracious man. Transactions in that office are, of course, private. 2005.
In collision, so the story goes, the fragments explode into discrete shards and splinters that reprise the terror of being exposed.
The long path, modeling a myriad of transaction events at theoretical scales across multiple continents, drags remnant fragments as its requisite baggage. Meanwhile, career aesthetics are, by necessity, a finite confinement loop.
In particular parts of the aesthetic web, where it can be dangerous, particles of culture have different, darker textures, always the needy reality of metaphor—typically black and white.
Violence and expressions of inhumanity adopt the persona of anonymity.
Aesthetic irony relies on the pieces of the picture's story already being in place; otherwise, there would be no space between the splinters, and what connections would we make? The leaps are always, "How do we get out of here?" and "I'd like to be over there."
Digging around in the fields that our predecessors eked out, one still hopes for magic.
I was born in 1952, in Des Moines, Iowa, on the day Dwight Eisenhower was elected president. 2025: I live in the Blue Ridge of Virginia.
Dennis Balk
Dennis Balk,
Shards & Splinters (Al-Wehdat Suite) I, 2005/2025,
Acrylic, oil crayon, industrial paint stick, graphite and fabric ink on Korean Oxford canvas,
147.3 x 91.4 cm
, 58 x 36 in
(DB-01)
Dennis Balk,
Shards & Splinters (Al-Wehdat Suite) II, 2005/2025,
Acrylic, oil crayon, industrial paint stick, graphite and fabric ink on Korean Oxford canvas
, 147.3 x 91.4 cm,
58 x 36 in,
(DB-02)
Dennis Balk
, Shards & Splinters (Al-Wehdat Suite) III, 2005/2025
, Acrylic, oil crayon, industrial paint stick, graphite and fabric ink on Korean Oxford canvas,
147.3 x 91.4 cm,
58 x 36 in,
(DB-03)
Dennis Balk
, Shards & Splinters (Al-Wehdat Suite) IV, 2005/2025
, Acrylic, oil crayon, industrial paint stick, graphite and fabric ink on Korean Oxford canvas,
147.3 x 91.4 cm,
58 x 36 in
, (DB-04)
Dennis Balk,
Shards & Splinters (Al-Wehdat Suite) V, 2005/2025
, Acrylic, oil crayon, industrial paint stick, graphite and fabric ink on Korean Oxford canvas,
147.3 x 91.4 cm,
58 x 36 in,
(DB-05)
Dennis Balk,
Shards & Splinters (Al-Wehdat Suite) VI, 2005/2025,
Acrylic, oil crayon, industrial paint stick, graphite and fabric ink on Korean Oxford canvas,
147.3 x 91.4 cm
, 58 x 36 in,
(DB-06)
Dennis Balk (b. 1952, Des Moines, IA) is a visual artist, an Associate Professor and a designer recently based in Bangkok currently living in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia. He held the position of Chairperson of the Computer Graphics/ Multimedia Department at Bangkok University International College, as well as the Director of the BUI Media Lab from 2009 – 2018. Prior to this position, he was Coordinator of the Fine Arts/Computer Graphics Department at NYIT, Bahrain Campus. During the 90s and early 00s Balk was a designer at numerous advertising agencies in New York including McCann Erickson. Since the late 80s his gallery and museum work has addressed the conditions of narrative and the narrative aspects of historicizing the present. The media for the gallery work has been broad, including; early digital printing, painting and sculpture, theater and audience participation installations. His work has been exhibited and reviewed internationally. In New York Mr. Balk was represented by American Fine Arts, Co.
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