Anthony Baab

Anthony Baab (b. 1981) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses drawing, sculpture, collage, installation, printmaking, and animation. Moving between two and three dimensions, Baab creates works in which images and objects are repeatedly constructed, altered, fragmented, and reconfigured. His practice is driven by an interest in processes of transformation and in translating physical and perceptual experiences into visual form.

Baab's earlier work explored systems of reproduction and transformation, frequently moving an image through multiple stages of photography, drawing, printing, folding, and sculptural construction. His Ummagumma works, for example, began with photographs of folded sheets of glossy paper that were printed, refolded, photographed again, drawn upon, pushed into three-dimensional space, and ultimately compressed back into images. In his subsequent Cover the Earth installations, Baab expanded this interest into architectural space, constructing labyrinthine environments from cardboard, commercial packaging, drawing, and other everyday materials.

More recently, Baab has turned his attention toward the body. His ink drawings, three-dimensional collages, and strata-cut animations take inspiration from biomedical models, medical diagnostic imagery, and the physical sensations of inhabiting a body. The work developed in part from Baab's experiences with somatic meditation and his interest in the shifting perception of the body's interior in relation to its external surroundings. Through drawing, constructed form, and animation, he seeks to translate bodily sensations into visual form.

Baab has presented solo exhibitions at Haw Contemporary, Grand Arts in Kansas City, Threewalls in Chicago, Antenna in New Orleans, and the Hudson D. Walker Gallery at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Haw Contemporary has presented several substantial exhibitions of his work, including Ummagumma (2014), Cover the Earth III (2016), and What Do You Do When You No Longer Know What Good Is? (2019). His work has also been exhibited at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art and Provincetown Art Association and Museum, and was included in The Lawrence Lithography Workshop: Highlights from the Archive at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

His work is held in permanent collections including the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park; Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Manhattan, Kansas; and the Microsoft Art Collection.

Baab has participated in several significant artist residencies and fellowship programs. He was a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown in 2014–15 and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in 2015. In 2024, he was an artist-in-residence at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans.

Baab received his BFA in Painting and Printmaking from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2004 and his MFA in Interdisciplinary Art from Cornell University in 2009. He is Senior Professor of Practice in Painting and Drawing at Tulane University in New Orleans.