Using synthetic turf, yarn, buckskin, and textile elements, Teresa Baker pushes painting beyond the traditional canvas and into a tactile meditation on landscape, belonging, memory, and the boundary between the natural and the constructed.
At the Whitney Biennial 2026, painting is not confined to paint on canvas.
Across the exhibition, materials, environments, and histories continually reshape what a painting can be. Curated by Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer, the Biennial moves through atmosphere, relationships, and systems rather than a single fixed narrative, creating space for artists whose work crosses categories.
Teresa Baker’s work fits powerfully within that expanded field.
At first glance, her large compositions read as abstraction: fields of color, texture, and form. But the closer you move, the more the materials begin to complicate that first impression.
The base is synthetic turf.
Immediately, the material evokes landscape. It resembles grass and open land, yet it is artificial, manufactured, and controlled.
That contradiction is central to the work.
Between Landscape and Simulation
Baker uses turf as more than a surface.
It becomes an idea.
The material asks the viewer to question what kind of landscape is being presented. Is it natural or constructed? Is it remembered or simulated? Is it a place, or simply the visual suggestion of one?
That ambiguity gives the work its tension.
Rather than depicting a literal landscape, Baker creates the feeling of one.
Horizons, pathways, fields, and spatial divisions seem to emerge without ever resolving into a specific location.
The work exists somewhere between place and memory.
Materials That Carry Presence
Across the turf, Baker adds materials including yarn, buckskin, and other textile elements.
These additions introduce a completely different physical language.
The turf feels industrial.
The textiles feel intimate.
One is manufactured and uniform. The others suggest touch, labor, craft, and the presence of the hand.
That contrast creates a quiet dialogue between the synthetic and the organic, the industrial and the personal, the constructed and the intuitive.
The materials do not simply sit on top of one another.
They begin to define how the work is understood.
Abstraction as an Intuitive Process
Baker’s compositions do not feel rigidly engineered.
Instead, they appear to evolve through the act of making.
Shapes emerge.
Textures shift.
Forms accumulate.
The resulting compositions feel almost as though they have grown rather than been designed.
That intuitive quality is important because it prevents the work from becoming purely formal.
The abstraction carries feeling.
It suggests place without mapping it.
It creates structure without becoming architectural.
It offers a sense of landscape while resisting direct representation.
Painting Without a Canvas
Baker’s work also raises a larger question about the definition of painting itself.
If a composition uses turf, yarn, buckskin, and textile materials, does it still operate as painting?
At the Whitney Biennial, the answer feels deliberately open.
Her work occupies the wall like painting, but it also behaves like sculpture and installation.
It has surface, depth, texture, and physical presence.
It extends the idea of painting into material space.
That expansion reflects one of the strongest qualities of the Biennial: artists are not being forced into traditional categories.
The boundaries between painting, sculpture, textile, installation, and environment become increasingly fluid.
The Experience of Scale
Scale also changes the way Baker’s work is encountered.
Standing in front of the larger compositions, you do not experience them simply as objects hanging on a wall.
They begin to surround your field of vision.
The surface becomes almost environmental.
You are not physically entering the work, but visually, it creates a space that feels inhabitable.
The Whitney’s architecture amplifies this quality.
Light moves across the synthetic turf, catching on fibers and changing the appearance of the material throughout the day.
The work responds to the environment around it.
And the environment responds to the work.
Rethinking Land and Belonging
Within the wider Whitney Biennial 2026, Baker’s work contributes to larger conversations about land, place, environment, and belonging.
She does not illustrate those ideas directly.
Instead, she builds them into the materials themselves.
Synthetic grass suggests land while reminding us that landscapes can be manufactured.
Textiles introduce human touch.
Buckskin carries another layer of material presence.
Together, these elements raise questions about the way people experience, alter, remember, and define place.
The land in Baker’s work is not distant or idealized.
It is constructed.
Handled.
Interpreted.
And continually reshaped.
The Power of Subtlety
What makes Baker’s work especially compelling is how quietly it operates.
There is no need for spectacle.
The work rewards patience.
The longer you look, the more the relationships between texture, material, color, and form begin to reveal themselves.
Small details become significant.
A change in surface.
A shift in rhythm.
The point where one material meets another.
That slower way of looking becomes part of the experience.
And in that slowing down, the work begins to change how you think about landscape itself.
Not as something fixed or purely natural, but as something shaped by memory, culture, material, and human intervention.
Within the Whitney Biennial 2026, Teresa Baker’s work becomes a quiet but powerful meditation on place—how we see it, how we construct it, and how deeply we remain connected to it even when representation gives way to abstraction.
Explore the Complete Tarik Talk Whitney Biennial 2026 Series
Tarik Talk created dedicated coverage of every artist featured in the Whitney Biennial 2026, with individual episodes exploring the artists, artworks, ideas, and perspectives shaping this edition of the Biennial.
Watch and listen to the complete series across Tarik Talk’s podcast streaming platforms and social media platforms, and explore the full Whitney Biennial 2026 series on TarikTalk.com.