DAVID SHAW . Hang-ups and High Water
Gravity is heavy. It’s a drag. It’s a sculptor’s worst nightmare, though I really enjoy the struggle. It seems to be what our existence is all about. When I first started making things, I wanted them to be weightless, pure idea, consciousness manifest and fleeting, raw desire. But the damn weight of everything—the stuff, the matter—created a constant dialogue, continual concessions. Through drawing, I was free to investigate my hang-ups any way I like.
As for the High Water drawings, we seem so far removed from the natural world that our hubris attached to “understanding Nature” or even mimicking it seems quaint and limiting, turning nature into a static concept. The feeling in the drawings of a lack of solid ground is a situation I find myself in quite often. Cliches such as “In over my head” or “seeing the forest for the trees” percolate through the process of attempting to describe the chaotic event of a surface in a downpour.
David Shaw was born in 1965 in Rochester, New York. He had seven solo exhibitions with Feature, Inc. He is a recipient of the Peter S. Reed Foundation Award (2015) and the Nancy Graves Foundation Award for Visual Artists (2008). His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY, the Artphilein Foundation in Vaduz, Liechtenstein and numerous private collections around the world. Shaw received his BA in Fine Arts from Colgate University in 1987. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.