2012 Catalogue Archive

In his paintings and outdoor installations, Canadian artist Andrew Dadson explores public and cultural notions of boundaries. For his lawn works, the artist uses non-toxic acrylic to paint a monochrome rectangle directly on the grass, creating a large scale painting that uses the grass as surface, thereby testing our ideas about private yards (which are, in fact, on display to the public). This idea carries over into the art world in his monochromatic paintings where the artist continually applies layers of paint to the canvas, pushing and scraping them to the edges away from the traditional location of meaning, where they build up in sculptural mounds. In speaking about his work, Dadson says, “Everything has boundaries; the delimitations between such can be static and opaque or permeable and imagined. In my practice, I search for the spaces and opportunity to then question where such boundaries begin and end.” Dadson recently won The Brink, a biennial award given out by the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington. His work has been included in group shows at Xavier Hufkens, Brussels; Kunstverein Freiburg; and Vancouver Art Gallery, among others. He had a recent solo shows at Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, and created a work for the Seattle Art Museum’s Summer Project series in Olympic Sculpture Park.