MdW Assembly will bring together artist-led projects from across the region for a free, three-day alternative (to an) art fair September 9th-11th, 2022 in Chicago. The assembly will take place at MANA Contemporary, in addition to Co-Prosperity and other Chicago venues. With the goal of bringing together multiple hyperlocal scenes from across the Midwest, gathering at MdW Assembly will facilitate opportunities to work together to build pathways for lasting coalitions of purposeful, artist-led action. More Info Here!
HARDLY A SCRAMBLE
MORE LIKE A SCAMPER
Dorian Dean
9.9.2022-9.11.2022
MANA Contemporary | Chicago, IL
4th Floor
In conjunction with the MdW Fair in Chicago, stop-gap projects presents HARDLY A SCRAMBLE / MORE LIKE A SCAMPER by Dorian Dean (Iowa City, IA). Dean’s interdisciplinary based works use regular objects, language, drawing, time, and the body to create spaces that feel like thinking. Using improvisation and a playful approach to composition, their work responds to, and takes shape on the wall, floor and page through temporary arrangements. With absurd sincerity, the exhibition's title, HARDLY A SCRAMBLE / MORE LIKE A SCAMPER, muses on the attachment of meaning to efficiency and the usefulness of a tool for accomplishing any task. Dean creates “swiss army knife combos” of tragically earnest tools trying to do a good job, without ever having enough time.
Dean’s work often intersects with documentation through photography and book forms, and for the MdW Assembly, Dean is collaborating with Flatpack Publications (Connor Frew) on a printed piece that takes the form of a narrative riddle that will become a pin-the-tail-on-the-chalkboard part of the installation. Flatpack Publications, who is stop-gap projects’ Publisher in Residence, will also be exhibiting examples of their alternative gallery guides and riso publications that they’ve made in collaboration with artists for past exhibitions, and additional works from their expansive publishing practice.
Untitled, from the exhibition: GO ON GO ON GO, Dorian Dean, 2021. Found materials, drawing and artist interacting with the arrangements in various positions. Dimensions variable.
Dorian Dean (she/they) was born in Baltimore, Maryland and currently lives and works in Iowa City, Iowa. Dorian completed a MFA in Painting and Certificate of Book Arts at the University of Iowa and received their BFA from Tyler School of Art in 2007. Deeply committed to education as a tool for social change, they have worked as a teaching artist in community organizations such as the Claymobile, a mobile arts program working with incarcerated young adults and inner-city schools and spent five years as a kindergarten and first grade teacher at an independent cooperative school. Dorian is the recipient of the University of Iowa Pelzer fellowship, Covid Relief fellowship and the MFA summer fellowship. Dorian’s work responds and records the actions of process. The objects and words found in their work ask the viewer to question the assumptions of the body or a familiar object. Their essay and “Straightforward folder” series is published in the spring 2022 issue of Brink, an in-print literary journal dedicated to publishing hybrid, cross-genre work. Dorian's work has been shown at Bisignano Gallery, University of Dubuque, IA and has a forthcoming exhibition at SOIL Gallery, Seattle, WA. Dorian currently lives in Iowa City and is the curator for the Times Club at Prairie Lights.
Flatpack Publications is a small, experimental publishing outfit founded by Connor Frew in 2019 and centered on thoughtful, conscious, and collaborative collation of artist books, zines, programming, and other ejecta of a flexible public space. Since its launch, the catalog of projects through Flatpack Publications has included physical solo projects, collaborative and anthology-style works, programming, book launch and community art vendor organizing, and publications commissioned for exhibitions in local art spaces. The work of Flatpack Publications can be found and purchased on Instagram @flatpackpubs, or online at https://linktr.ee/flatpackpub