DFN
Gallery is pleased to present our summer group exhibition, Animal
Tales. Curated by DFN Gallery’s John Nickle, the show features
paintings, drawings, and photographs of man’s contemporary relationship
to animals.
From the cave paintings at Lascaux
to the current animated film
Madagascar, humans have
depicted animals as characters in a universal story. Animals, wild and
domestic, have provided many things to man – a source of food and
clothing, transportation, and companionship. They have also been
worshipped and mythologized, and have often been seen as a physical
manifestation of God.
By the 19th century,
technological advances and a Biblical belief that man shall have
dominion over the animals led to their brutal subjugation, while many
species were hunted to extinction. As
technology has continued to advance, most humans have migrated away from
coexisting with wild animals, but
we have enhanced our ability to safely observe them in their natural
habitats. Oddly, the further we are removed from animals, the more we
project “humanness” upon them, developing a sort of detached empathy for
them. At the same time, our scientific understanding of animal behavior
has ironically returned us to more
pagan appreciation of animals.
Once-feared predators have now become pop-culture icons, like the benign
characters in Shinto-influenced Japanese anime, or corporate mascots for
breakfast cereal.
Man’s presence, not always seen in the
works included in Animal Tales, is nevertheless
implied. In Damon Lehrer's Delacroix-influenced Liontamer,
a lion is emasculated by a beachball-toting girl in a bikini. In
Lutheran Descent, Shawn Spencer suggests a darkly comic fairy tale
in which a fox swallows a sheep whole. Katrina Balling's deadpan
paintings of isolated ceramic tchotchkes are made iconic when stripped
of their suburban context. Kam Mak's live Chinatown turtles make us
aware of our own sterile processed and prepackaged food. David
Humphrey's Spot resembles a mix of man, Minotaur and family dog,
freed from the maze and wandering the neighborhood. While the 34
artists included in Animal Tales take varied approaches to the
subject matter, all present contemporary narrative visions.
Animal Tales features the work of
Katrina Balling, Dozier
Bell, Tom Birkner, George Boorujy,
Chuck Connelly, Anton van Dalen, Peter Drake, Jana Duda,
James Esber, Rick Finkelstein, Madora Frey, Jill Greenberg,
Julie Heffernan, Werner Hoeflich, Catherine Howe, Elizabeth Huey,
David Humphrey, John Jacobsmeyer, Kate Javens, Lisa Krivacka,
Damon Lehrer, Adela Leibowitz, Kam Mak, Marion Peck,
Raphael Perez, Sylvia Plachy, Jean-Pierre Roy, Wade Schuman,
Ryan Scully, Robert Selwyn, Shawn Spencer, Saul Steinberg,
Dan Witz, and Brenda Zlamany
