Gary Duehr: Swept Away
Curated by Flounder Lee
928 NW 21st Ave, Gainesville, Florida
Artist Statement
Swept along in the colorful swirl of city life, these pedestrians are often lost in their own thoughts or preoccupied with their next destination.
Each individual stands out from the crowd to focus our attention on their fashion, their gestures, their coupling or drifting apart.
Their private moments become public performance.
Curatorial Statement
The city street is one of the most democratic spaces we have — and one of the least. Everyone passes through, but not everyone is seen the same way.
In Gary Duehr’s Swept Away, the city and its business are blurred so that the focus becomes the humans that live there. Caught up in their own moments — glancing at phones, off to the office, lost in thought — these are tiny glimpses into a moment of these people’s lives.
Presented here at monumental scale — suspended above a yard, above a home, above the ordinary — these images ask us to reconsider what we amplify and what we let blur past.
Artist Biography
Gary Duehr has been chosen as a Best Emerging Artist in New England by the International Association of Art Critics, and he has received an Artist Grant in photography from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. His work has been featured in museums and galleries, including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; MOMA
PS 1, New York, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; and Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba, as well as exhibitions in Tokyo, Venice, Stockholm, London, and Barcelona. Past awards include grants from the LEF Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.
His public artworks include a video artwork for the Canadian subway system; a photo installation funded by the Visible Republic program of New England Foundation for the Arts, and a commission from the MBTA (Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority) for a permanent photo installation at North Station. Duehr has written about the arts for journals including ArtScope, Art New England, Art on Paper, Communication Arts, Frieze, and Public Culture. Currently he manages
Bromfield Gallery in Boston’s South End.
IG @gduehr
https://www.garyduehr.com/