Dean Kessmann - Details: Utilitarian Abstraction

DEAN KESSMANN: UTILITARIAN ABSTRACTION

June 22 – July 27, 2018

Opening Reception:

Friday, June 22^nd 5 – 7 pm

William Shearburn Gallery

665 S. Skinker Blvd.

St. Louis, MO 63105

William Shearburn Gallery is pleased to present Dean Kessmann: Utilitarian Abstraction, from June 22^nd to July 27^th, 2018 with an opening reception on Friday, June 22^nd from 5 to 7 pm. The exhibition explores the materiality of mass-produced products and consumer culture through re-presentation and re-contextualization of usually overlooked utilitarian printing marks on package design. Through a process of high-resolution scanning and digitizing that retains imperfections such as glue, tears, and other blemishes of packaging, Kessmann points viewers to reflect on the messy materiality of consumer products in a digital age. Kessmann simultaneously asks us to consider the relationship between consumer driven popular culture and abstraction in high art by enlarging, reprinting, and presenting these images within an art context.

Dean Kessmann lives and works in Washington DC. He has had one-person exhibitions at numerous institutions across the country including Furthermore, Washington, DC, Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL, Conner Contemporary Art, Washington, DC, Humanity Center Galleries, California State University, Chico, CA, White Flag Projects, St. Louis, MO, Regina Gouger Miller Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, School 33 Art Center, Baltimore, MD, and the Forum for Contemporary Art, St. Louis, MO.

Kessmann has also received numerous Artist Fellowship Grant Awards from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, as well as a Franz and Virginia Bader Fund Grant.  He has been a semi-finalist for the Sondheim Prize and has won awards from The Trawick Prize.  In 2009 he was an artist-in-residence at Light Work in Syracuse, NY.  Additionally, many important institutions have collected his work, such as the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Baltimore Museum of Art, Walker Art Center, The Phillips Collection, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Orlando Museum of Art, Light Work, and Museum of Contemporary Religious Art, among others. 

Kessmann is an Associate Professor of Photography at The George Washington University, where he teaches at the undergraduate and graduate levels. 

For further information, please contact Katherine Rodway Vega,

Katherine@shearburngallery.com, 314.367.8020 or visit www.shearburngallery.com