Dawn Kasper: WISH WANT WISH

Sat 09 Apr, 2016, 7pm
Free ($10 suggested donation)


“There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.”— George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman



Saturday, April 9th at The Emily Harvey Foundation, ISSUE Project Room presents Dawn Kasper’s WISH WANT WISH, a new improvisational performance composition evoking historical references to the philosophy of desire. Objects, storytelling, and sound function as a social sculpture explored in duration. Musical instruments and props reveal patterns drawn between theoretical questions of desire. Documentation becomes data collection; data collection becomes composition; composition becomes sound; sound then becomes archived. The residue of the performance action remains.

Dawn Kasper is a New York based interdisciplinary artist working in performance, installation, sculpture, drawing, photography, video and sound. Her work emerges out of a fascination with existentialism, subjects of vulnerability, desire, and the construction of meaning. Kasper often critiques the corporatized aspects of culture by examining the emotions most commonly manipulated by advertisers and media such as fear, panic, hate, envy, lust and anxiety. Creating scenes that double as a platform for living sculpture, Kasper performs in a structured yet spontaneous manner using props, costume, comedy, gesture, extreme physicality, repetition, and monologue. Her work has been exhibited widely; The Migros Museum, Zurich (2005), Human Resources, LA (2011), Tramway, Glasgow (2012), 2012 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY (2012), David Lewis, NY (2014), ADN Collection, Bolzano, Italy (2014), Redling Fine Art, LA (2015), Tang Museum, Skidmore College, NY (2015) and Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, OR (2015). Kasper is represented by Redling Fine Art in Los Angeles and David Lewis in New York.

Organized by Lawrence Kumpf.

Established in 2006, ISSUE Project Room's annual Artist-in-Residence program provides 6 emerging artists each with a year-long residency in 2015, offering access to rehearsal space and facilities, equipment, documentation, pr/marketing, curatorial and technical expertise to create new works, reach the next stage in their artistic development, and gain exposure to a broad public audience.

ISSUE Project Room's Artist-in-Residence program is made possible, in part, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and with the support of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.