Opening Reception with the Artist
Friday, September 10th, 6 - 8:30 pm
In the Vault Room:
“Detour” by Dana Hargrove
The Bridgette Mayer Gallery will present its fourth solo exhibition by artist Dana Hargrove. "Inhabit" will be on view from August 31 - September 25, 2010, with an opening reception Friday, September 10, from 6:00 - 8:30 pm. The exhibition will feature approximately 12 new paintings and sculptural installations. Also on view in the Vault Room will be “Detour”, a video installation by the artist, combining flash animation and wall painting.
Questioning the lines between representation and reality, Hargrove's latest body of work explores the restrictions and contradictions within our daily lives. Inspired by travels within the United States, as well as abroad, the pieces examine the unification of space expressed in airports, highways, cities and local commercial areas, which maintain a façade of control in a disorderly reality. By adapting visuals from their accepted locations and reframing them in an art context, the works draw the viewer in and encourage critical evaluation and a rethinking of everyday images. The pieces bring awareness to how daily experiences, as well as our values and ideals, are affected and influenced by outside factors of social order. Hargrove’s concern with the gap between the system and the individual, and the individual’s move into obscurity, is reflected through her latest show. Says the artist, "Familiar landscapes mediated by culture become starting points for many of these works. How we inhabit our world and manufacture that world to fit corporatized molds is an idea that has preoccupied me as an artist.”
Dana Hargrove received her B.F.A. from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee, Scotland and her M.F.A. from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Her recent solo exhibitions include “Point of Departure” at College of Saint Benedict / Saint Johns University (Collegeville, MN, 2010), “Mediated Landscapes” at Hiestand Gallery (Oxford, OH, 2009), and “Divide and Consider” at Bridgette Mayer Gallery (2008). She has completed residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, with a Full VSC Fellowship supported by the Joan Mitchell Foundation, in 2009 and at Greatmore Studios in Cape Town, South Africa in 2007. Hargrove was recently awarded the 2009 William and Dorothy Yeck First-Place Purchase Award at the National Young Painters Competition at Hiestand Galleries.