Deshawn Dumas
Lives and works in Brooklyn, New York
Represented by Ethan Cohen New York
Goverment Of self And Others, 2015 (all images from Tablet Series)
Statement of Purpose
My self-described tablets combine the abrasiveness of pre-gentrified cityscapes, e.g. graffiti covered walls, with the seductive aesthetic of consumer telecommunication devices such as smartphones and iPads. Made from an iridescent foil used in contemporary laser printers, in modernist terms, these works explore the tension between the ambiguity of gestural abstraction and the legibility of the written word.
Noble Minded, 2015.
To lay words on every word, 2015.
Shifting Perspective, 2015.
However, in the spirit of communication, I burn text into wood surfaces excerpted from late Enlightenment and anti-Enlightenment philosophers: G.W.F. Hegel, Maquis de Sade, Michel Foucault, and Kendrick Lamar. Most often, the chosen text concerns the ethos of liberal democracy or the development of frames of thought and modes of behavior that might challenge it. Said differently, my tablets celebrate the joy of U.S. Empire insofar as bottomless desire becomes infinite freedom, asymmetrical violence becomes hereditary privilege, mass consumption becomes free speech, moral relativism becomes social protest, and monopoly capitalism becomes participatory democracy.