Sandra Gering Inc. is pleased to present Nancy Dwyer, the artist’s second one-person exhibition with the gallery.
While continuing to explore language and perception with her familiar word-objects, Dwyer’s exhibition showcases new work that employs vernacular graphic elements to conflate context & object. By manipulating scale, color and repetition- integrating printed wallpaper, abstract form and furniture-like elements- each part’s expected role is switched. This reversal of background and foreground- i.e. form and content- allows for a new way to ‘read’ the work and its meaning.
Dwyer’s recent sculpture continues to embrace a variety of materials that typify her affection for the proletarian and her commitment to the accessible. Since the mid-80s, she has sustained an interest in a textbased format for painting, sculpture and installation that has allowed her to explore its objective/subjective qualities. Interpretation of the work challenges the viewer to locate ‘voice’, as ambivalence seems to be at its core. A constant feature however has always been Dwyer’s critical eye on contemporary mediated experience and society, often expressed with an acerbic wit and dark humor.
Nancy Dwyer has exhibited internationally since the early ‘80s. A core member of the Pictures Generation, she was also a cofounder of Hallwalls, the non-profit organization created as a cooperative for artists in Buffalo, NY in 1974. She studied at the State University of New York at New Paltz and the Empire State College Studio Program in New York, then completed her B.F.A. at the State University of New York at Buffalo. She completed a Masters degree in Interactive Telecommunications at New York University in 2002. She is currently an Associate Professor of Sculpture at the University of Vermont, Burlington. Dwyer has exhibited extensively, most recently with a retrospective in 2013 at the Fisher Landau Center for Art in Long Island City, NY. She has been included in exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, the Art Omi Fields Sculpture Park, Ghent, NY, the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT, the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, NY, the Kunstverein Frankfurt, Germany, the National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan, the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL among many others. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY, the Brooklyn Museum, NY, the Deste Foundation, Athens, Greece, the Rooseum, Malmo, Sweden and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, among others.