Dread Scott: A Sharp Divide
Dread Scott: A Sharp Divide
Dread Scott: A Sharp Divide
On display from September 1 - November 5, 2016.
A Sharp Divide was a survey of Dread Scott’s public engagement, performance, and multi media based work completed from 1987 – 2014 that tackle the racial and cultural disparities that exist within our criminal justice system such as: the criminalization of youth, profiling and discrimination, the school to prison pipeline, stop and frisk tactics, and other civil rights issues. The selected works were presented in the gallery as video, photography, recordings, and audience interactions.
As an activist artist Scott’s work is intentional and pointed. The protagonist, which might be at times the artist himself, confront the viewer through body posture, eye contact and dialog. Stills and video images are tightly framed, monochromatic, and devoid of any discernible background, creating a tension that contributes to an already highly charged atmosphere.
Addressing this divide head on both in the use of language and imagery is the foundation of his practice and necessary in order to encourage dialog, action, and change.
Dread Scott: A Sharp Divide catalog.
Installation photography by Jack Ramsdale courtesy of Rowan University Art Gallery.
Artist Statement
I make revolutionary art to propel history forward. This is a world where a tiny handful of people control the great wealth and knowledge humanity as a whole has created. It is a world of profound polarization, exploitation and suffering and billions are excluded from intellectual development and full participation in society. It does not have to be this way and my art is part of forging a radically different world. The work illuminates the misery that this society creates for so many people and it often encourages the viewer to envision how the world could be. I work in a range of media: performance, installation, video, photography, printmaking and painting. The thread that connects my work is an engagement with sharp social questions confronting humanity and a desire to push formal and conceptual boundaries as part of contributing to artistic development. My projects are presented in venues ranging from major museum galleries to street corners. Sometimes work is presented to an unexpecting audience. I bring contemporary art to a broader public and the audience is often an active element of the artwork.
www.dreadscott.net
About the Artist
Dread Scott makes revolutionary art to propel history forward. He first received national attention in 1989 when his art became the center of controversy over its use of the American flag. President G. H.W. Bush declared his artwork What is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag? “disgraceful” and the entire US Senate denounced this work and outlawed it when they passed legislation to “protect the flag.” To oppose this law and other efforts, which would effectively make patriotism compulsory, he, along with three other protesters, burned flags on the steps of the US Capitol. This resulted in a Supreme Court case and a landmark First Amendment decision.His art has been exhibited at the MoMA PS1, the Contemporary Art Museum Houston, The Walker Art Center and at the Pori Art Museum in Pori, Finland as well as on view in America is Hard to See, the Whitney Museum’s inaugural exhibition in their new building. In 2012, BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) presented his performance Dread Scott: Decision as part of their 30th Anniversary Next Wave Festival. In 2008, the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts presented Dread Scott: Welcome to America. Jack Shainman Gallery, Winkleman Gallery and Cristin Tierney in New York have exhibited recent work and his public sculptures have been installed at Logan Square in Philadelphia and Franconia Sculpture Park in Minnesota. His work is in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New Museum of Contemporary Art (NY) and the Akron Art Museum (OH).
He is a recipient of a Creative Capital Foundation grant, a Pollock Krasner Foundation grant, Fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and was a resident at Art Omi International Artists Residency and the Workspace Residency at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. He has been written about in The New York Times, Art In America, Sculpture Magazine, ArtNews, ArtForum, Art21 Magazine, Time, The London Guardian and several other newspapers, magazines and books. He has appeared on numerous local and national TV and radio shows including Oprah, The Today Show, and CBS This Morning speaking about his work and the controversy surrounding it.
Most recently his flag installation, A Man Was Lynched By Police Yesterday, was installed outside his gallery in New York City. It has been met with a barrage of reactions both violent and supportive. This piece is an updated version of the iconic 1936 flag that hung outside the New York City headquarters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) A Man Was Lynched Yesterday. Both are in response to racial violence towards African Americans. Scott’s flag is in response to recent killings of African Americans by police and the 1936 version was in response to killings by the KKK.
His work has been integrated into academic curricula and What is the Proper Way... is discussed in many art history classes and is featured in Henry Sayer’s “foundations” text A World of Art.
Dread works in a range of media including performance, photography, screen printing, video, installation and painting. His works can be hard-edged and poignant. He plays with fire—metaphorically and sometimes literally—as when he burned $171 on Wall Street and encouraged those with money to burn to add theirs to the pyre. The breadth of media he explores is unified by the themes he addresses and how he handles them. His art illuminates the misery that this society creates for so many and it often encourages the viewer to envision how the world could be.