From his phototext canvases in the 1960s to his video works in the 1970s to his installations in the 1980s John Baldessaris b1931 varied work has been seminal in the field of conceptual art Integrating semiology and mass media imagery he employed such strategies as appropriation deconstruction decontextualization sequentiality and textimage juxtaposition With an ironic wit Baldessaris work considers the gathering sorting and reorganizing of information Something that is part of my personality is seeing the world slightly askew Its a perceptual stance The real world is absurd sometimes so I dont make a conscious attempt but because I come at it in a certain way it seems really strange Baldessari says in this interview with Nancy Bowen A historical interview originally recorded in 1979 and reedited in 2003 with support from the Lyn Blumenthal Memorial Fund
