Trystan Bates explores storytelling, social interaction, and ritual as frameworks for understanding our shared experience. Through a process of collecting, abstracting, and rearranging information into symbolic visual forms, Bates distills ideas into geometric shapes and gestural elements. Providing just enough information to suggest a narrative without prescribing a singular interpretation, meaning emerges in a different way for each viewer. 

In Forms of Connection, Bates investigates fragmentation and unity as interconnected states rather than opposing conditions. Moments of pause take center stage as space becomes an active element representing possibility, reflection, and unseen connections. These works are an evolution of Bates’ visual language, with isolated forms converging into dense, interlocking compositions, where every shape depends upon the next. In the transformation from separate elements to a cohesive whole, Bates reflects on the way meaning is formed – not through individual symbols alone, but through the relationships that develop between them, creating a visual metaphor for the ways individuals, communities, and ideas continuously shape one another. 

Image: Bates Trystan, “Cosmic Jawbreaker”, 2023 

BCA’s fall exhibitions are supported in part by the Maslow Family Foundation. Hospitality sponsors: Sugarsnap and Lake Champlain Chocolates. Burlington City Arts is supported in part by the Vermont Arts Council & the National Endowment for the Arts.