April 2014

Anastasia & Friends in Columbia, SC, Features Works by Dawn Hunter

Anastasia & Friends in Columbia, SC, will present A Magician, a Scientist, a Rock Star and the Girls, featuring the works of Dawn Hunter, on view from Apr. 3 - 25, 2014. A reception will be held on Apr., 3, from 6-9pm, during the First Thursday Art Crawl on Main Street in Columbia.

Hunter pursued her undergraduate studies at the Kansas City Art Institute, Parsons School of Design, and the Yale Norfolk Summer School of Art & Music. As a Regents Fellow, she received her MFA from the University of California, Davis, where she studied with Robert Arneson, Roy DeForest, and Irit Rogoff. She has participated in numerous solo and multiple artist exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe. Additionally, she has also received many awards and grants for her artwork, most notably, a Starr Foundation Fellowship, enabling her to be the first American woman to serve as Artist-in-Residence at the Royal Academy of Art, London.

The production and distribution of her Spectacle Spectacular has been supported by a University of South Carolina Research and Productive Scholarship Grant, a Josephine Abney Research Fellowship, special funding from the University of South Carolina Research Foundation, a Puffin Foundation Ltd. Grant, Cultural Council of Richland and Lexington Counties Quarterly Grant, and a University of South Carolina Research Opportunity Program Grant Category III. Hunter began this series through the award of a summer residency at The Cooper Union, New York, NY. She is currently an Associate Professor of Art and Head of Foundations at the University of South Carolina in Columbia.

Hunter offered the following statement, “I create visual representations of our complex and ambivalent psychological relationship with the messages about gendered identity that are disseminated through popular culture. I am interested in how young females are shaped psychologically through the consumption of mainstream cultural symbols. I analyze narratives of fashion photography and their ability to mold behavior through the symbolic portrayal of models. Utilizing the models as surrogates and stereotypes, I deconstruct their unobtainable status through narratives that question the status quo. The images address political and gender issues while simultaneously serving as personal testimony. Fashion photographers rely on basic shapes in set design and model positioning to create a sense of harmonious balance that discourages viewers’ interrogation of the message behind the image, I use techniques to achieve the opposite effect—discordant messages, tension of shape, and psychological unrest.”

For further information check our SC Commercial Gallery listings, contact Anastasia Chernoff by e-mail at (anastasiachernoff@gmail.com) or call at 803/665-6902.

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