Stephen Batura  “Fixtures” In his fifth solo Robischon Gallery exhibition, Stephen Batura returns with “Fixtures,” an intimate exhibition of paintings investigating a demanding and complicated abstract mark-making technique with the chandelier as subject. Previous solo exhibitions included the artist’s very large-scale casein and acrylic paintings including floodplain, which was nearly the same size as the gallery’s main wall, and his massive train derailment paintings that filled the entire gallery – some based on Batura’s decade-long Charles Lillybridge series project that included paintings of early Denver, its surrounding environs, and its citizens engaged in work and recreation.  With “Fixtures,” Batura’s interest shifts to the possibilities of abstraction in smaller format paintings created with a technique of assembling individual elements of dried paint so that each inhabits the role of a single brushstroke that adds to the layered, aggregate whole. The painting style offers shifts in perspective with paintings appearing more abstract up close and more realistic from afar.  For the series, Batura’s process involves spreading a thin layer of acrylic paint on glass with a spatula. When dry, he peels off a sheet of pure color that he cuts into hundreds of small elements to be painstakingly fixed to a panel with gel medium. Washes of color amplify this materiality with the assembled composition with some of the chandeliers becoming blurred in a disintegration of color. Further intrigue for the artist for this series comes from thinking formally about chandeliers as industrial objects while not emphasizing any particular class distinction that might be suggested by such an ornate object – one that seems to him like it should be obsolete. He states, “Chandeliers, meant to be status symbols, can be both grand in moneyed homes or restaurants, and, also so humble as to be available at any home improvement store.” The sheer ubiquity of the lighting fixtures taken from the artist’s own photographs from Venice, Italy to Denver offer Stephen Batura an opportunity to seize on a new method of painting while capturing each subject and its subsequent illumination as form and color.