June 14 — August 9, 2025
Arriba, Abajo, al Centro, pa' Dentro
Jeff Baker
Conduit Gallery presents Arriba, Abajo, al Centro, pa' Dentro, the fifth solo exhibition at the gallery by Jeff Baker, a Dallas-born photographer. The exhibition features large-scale photographic prints that capture the ethereal beauty of New Mexico’s cloudscapes and ancient cliff dwellings—images both timeless and timely, taken during and following the global pandemic shutdown.
ARRIBA …EL CIELO …the sky
ABAJO … LA TIERRA …the earth
AL CENTRO … EL CORAZON … the heart
PA DENTRO … LA ALMA … the soul
- Latin American Toast
The exhibition title, derived from a traditional Latin American toast, frames the show as a meditation on sky (el cielo), earth (la tierra), heart (el corazón), and soul (la alma). The photographs, grand in scale and contemplative in nature, invite viewers to step into a landscape of spiritual magnitude and raw beauty. This work is not merely landscape photography—it is a visual philosophy.
Baker notes of the work, "Landscape photography is a process of meditative outlook and rapid reflex... akin to a martial art. These prints are intended to be immersive—so you can walk into them. Let the beauty distract you, so you can remember what is really important."
Following his 2022 exhibition Gaia’s Rant—a fierce reflection on environmental destruction—this new body of work offers both a reckoning and a reprieve. Created amid the isolation of the pandemic and against the backdrop of global crisis, these images channel both reverence and urgency. They serve as what the artist calls “a sledgehammer of love,” challenging us to reconnect with the natural world and to protect what remains.
Jeff Baker was born in Dallas, Texas in 1952. He found himself in Gary Winogrand’s photography courses at UT Austin in the mid 1970s, listening to and being critiqued by Walker Evans, Lee Friedlander, Larry Fink and John Szarkowski among others, who came to lecture. Honing his craft through 35 years of editorial and advertising assignments, he continually worked on personal projects, including large-format ethnographic studies in South America and Indonesia, landscapes informed by the relationship of man to his surroundings, and still-lifes of industrial-age tools that reference the personalities of their inventors. He now splits his time between Taos, New Mexico and Costa Rica.