"Robert Baribeau, a disciple of the New York School's Abstract Expressionism, adds his own contemporary spin to that tradition. By allowing the natural impulse of his materials to spot, drip and smudge, Baribeau paints raw, tactile surfaces that are a feast of juicy strokes, stripes, polka dots, and other collaged textures and patterns. There is a dynamic tension in Baribeau's work between a surface of powerful exuberance and a sense of anomie. The splashed, scratched and scored surface is further enlivened by the collaged squares of polka-dot fabric, as well as by densely layered sheets of paper whose glued-down edges create seams that serve as a rough grid beneath the skin of the pigment, providing a casual armature to anchor the freely floating form."
- Allan Stone
What do Robert Baribeau’s painting show us that we haven’t seen before?
They’re full of the painterly Sturm und Drang, the excitement about paint – narcissistic absorption in its fluid pleasures and seductive touch, self-dramatization through
dramatizing the medium.
- Donald Kuspit, ARTFORUM
Robert Baribeau: Son of Abstract Expressionism! With neo–New York School gusto, Robert Baribeau energizes his surfaces—canvas, paper, smooth wood—through fat, drippy strokes and blobs of pigment, gessoed impasto, polka-dotted fabric, striped paper, and unexpected embellishments like jigsaw puzzle pieces. His compositions are restless, shifting cacophonies of color and form, refusing the eye a moment’s rest.
Even in quieter moments, his work retains a vibrant intensity. Some pieces evoke formal elegance and serenity, while others erupt in joyous riots of impasto. Across all mediums, Baribeau’s painterly passion is exhilarating—his art lives lustily on, a contemporary echo of Abstract Expressionism’s boldest impulses.
- Grace Glueck, The New York Times
Baribeau too is primed for intense colors, an ever-changing spectrum of vibrant hues that distinguish these paintings; colors like nature explode. He is not trumped by the seasons instead each season translates into its own palette. Night, day, winter, spring, find their way onto canvases though everything in Baribeau’s world remains strikingly untitled.
- Michael Klein
An exploration of pleasing and riotous work in a palette of bright jewel tones..
-Lizzie Simon, The New York Sun
Robert Baribeau’s most recent work. I consider him to be one of the greatest living artists, and these newest works are simply breathtaking. I very rarely offer my own commentary in this way but these pieces are moving and some of the most interesting I have seen in some time. @roberttbaribeau #robertbaribeau
= Donald Wood-Smith, ESQ, VW Contemporary
What do Robert Baribeau’s painting show us that we haven’t seen before?
They’re full of the painterly Sturm und Drang, the excitement about paint – narcissistic absorption in its fluid pleasures and seductive touch, self-dramatization through
dramatizing the medium.
- Donald Kuspit, ARTFORUM