DENNIS BALK, limited olive oil edition, 2011.

DENNIS BALK, limited olive oil edition, 2011.

Dennis Balk (b. 1952) avails himself of biker language and snake oil connotations to make a sexy and dangerous object that almost, but not quite, denies the bounteous nature of its liquid gold contents. His collaboration with Agricola Due Leoni took place in 2011. He lives in Richmond, Virginia, with a practice that has spanned the Far East, the Middle East, and New York City. 

Balk spent many years practicing advertising in New York City, although he has made a name as a visual artist associated with the Vanguard Gallery, American Fine Arts, and the movement known as “institutional critique.” His works and exhibitions are interdisciplinary and have connected concepts and ideas with different materials in a novel way. Balk also taught in Bahrain, through New York University, and traveled in the Middle East from 2006-2008. He subsequently became Chair of the Computer Graphics and Multimedia Department at Bangkok University in Thailand. During the past decade Balk has continued to pursue his own projects in conjunction with his teaching. He is the first Artist-in-Residence at Masseria Pernice, Sicily (2019) also curated by Cornelia Lauf. His snake oil design is not exactly gastronomically inviting, but avails itself of circus graphics and is fetchingly alluring, despite the dangerous connotations.