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Dawn Cerny
Iruit pie & the history of paper_ cafe, 2016
The Seattle University Visiting Artist in Residence (SUVAIR) program facilitates research and supports artists in their creative process. The annual six-month residency provides artists with the valuable resources of time and space for open-ended investigation, experimentation, and collaboration to push the boundaries of their own practice. The program promotes new approaches to arts education, fosters community building, and provides a catalyst for social change.
This year’s Seattle University Visiting Artist in Residence is multidisciplinary artist Dawn Cerny. Cerny received her MFA in Sculpture at the Milton Avery School of Art at Bard College and works across the disciplines including drawing, photography, publication and time-based media. She has received a Washington State Artist Fellowship, Betty Bowen Special recognition award, and The Behnke Foundation Brink Award. Cerny has exhibited at galleries throughout the United States and in British Columbia.
Showroom is a survey of the work Cerny created during her tenure as SUVAIR, beginning in July 2016. These recent works on paper and in sculpture examine the formal articulation of value and power—or lack thereof—through everyday gestures, bodily postures, and personal aesthetic choices. Corresponding physically to the body and readily personified, the monochromatic sculptural works central to Showroom also evoke racks, chairs, and cabinets of uncertain purpose, at once amplifying and distorting furniture’s connection to the human form. Amassed together within the gallery, they might comprise a warped retail sales floor as the exhibition title suggests, or they could be a domestic arrangement or a crowd of people, alone together in public space. Like Buster Keaton’s slapstick comedy—a favorite of the artist’s—Cerny’s sculptures can be seen as an absurdist response to the productive rationalism of modern times, one that both represents and is alienated from everyday life.
In conjunction with Showroom—and in lieu of an opening reception—the artist invites you to join her for weekly brown bag lunch screenings in Vachon Gallery. These are free and open to the public.
January 13th 12:30 pm - College (1927), dir. Buster Keaton, 65 min.
Jan. 20th 12:30 pm - One Day Pina Asked (1983), dir. Chantal Akerman, 57 min.
Jan. 27th 12:30 PM - The Gleaners and I (2001), dir. Agnès Varda, 82 min.
Fine Arts Building (FINR)
206-296-5360
Generally Open: Monday through Friday 8:30-4:30 PM
Please call to verify gallery hours if you are making a special trip
