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Synthesizing photomontage, painting, and language, John Baldessari (born 1931) creates visual juxtapositions. He illuminates, confounds, and challenges meaning by upending commonly held expectations of how images function, often by drawing the viewer s attention to minor details, absences, or the spaces between things. By placing colorful dots over faces, obscuring portions of scenes, or juxtaposing stock photographs with quixotic phrases, he injects humor and dissonance into vernacular imagery. His vast body of work has been shown in venues around the world. Baldessari has taught at the University of California, San Diego, and is currently a professor at California Institute of the Arts, Valencia. He received a BA and an MFA San Diego State College, and also did post-graduate work at University of California, Berkeley; Otis Art Institute. Los Angeles; and Chouinard Art Institute, Los Angeles.