Works by David Spear
Exhibition: October 7 – October 31
Gallery Reception: October 10, 3:00-7:00 p.m.
There is not one way to make art. Every artistic project and space has different conceptual goals and motivations and therefore requires a different set of solutions. Rather than concentrate on one solution for one problem, I have concentrated on creating a variety of works relying on a diversity of styles, concepts and appropriations which differ on consideration of the prospective viewer, venue and conceptual purpose. This is the philosophy I subscribed to early in my artistic career and it is through this versatility that I have been able to develop multiple methods that influence one another and continually weave through new artistic avenues.
As manager, director and producer, David Spear presents the work of Harrison Bergeron.
The work is about Folly. More specifically, it speaks about the postmodern reality of our current informational deluge, where everything and nothing is believable and truth is subjective. These works re-contextualize classical historical paintings by substituting what we already know (in paintings like Washington Crossing the Delaware and Liberty Leading the People) with low resolution and vaguely modeled clay reconstructions of the paintings. In these works, man has been replaced by clay, the mythological material of man. This symbolizes the malleability of the original information and the struggle to understand it enough to learn from it. The clay is later replaced by the “true” substance of man, meat. These works describe the romantic mode of trying to clinically dissect and anatomize the interior of the body and soul through the process of painting, sculpting and video, but ultimately serve as a Memento Mori. The works go on to critique the results of man’s habitual follies by showing the calamities that fester within contemporary politics that have similar ties with past mythologies.