Redling Fine Art

Dawn Kasper

CV in print & other writings

Dawn Kasper’s work addresses a relentless obsessive fascination with topics such as exposure, desire, process and meaning. Her ongoing projects such as Clues To The Meaning of Life, Visual Poems: Studies In Time and Space and On The Exposure of Process: A Nomadic Studio Practice Experiment, develop over various timelines, yet run concurrently, each with an individualized process. She performs in a calculated yet spontaneous manner, using props to punctuate her actions. Kasper combines slapstick comedy and monologue as a way to frame her questions around the nature of existence and physical objects. She then attempts to answer these questions while inhabiting different characters, each differentiated through costume and costume changes, with each shift taking place before the audience. Each character has a task; an action to accomplish. The environments in which she performs provide the forum, an open-air laboratory of thought, in which she is able to create a theatrical space that doubles as a platform for living sculpture. She transforms the space through the use of props, musical instruments and personas, ritualizing the performance environment through the repetition of actions and words. Everything is in play and everything is mobile, as the culmination of these actions find her various characters building a sculpture that marks her study into being and process. The result is a sculptural installation, activated by performative action that exposes the artistic process to the audience.


Evoking performance traditions of the Fluxus movement and following the trajectories of predecessors such as Chris Burden, Yoko Ono, Vito Acconci, and Marina Abramovic, Kasper creates moments and situations in which her body is pushed to both physical and psychological limits in an attempt to create a performance condition in which conventions and realities can be transformed and manipulated. Committed to performance and the role of physical corporeal presence within it, Kasper engages in acts and gestures that implicate her own body and at times the bodies of the viewers. Performance for Kasper is a sacred act between a viewer and a performing subject, and her work attempts to generate distinct performance spaces where the unconscious is released, societal norms are extinguished, and the realization of improbable worlds becomes graspable. Ongoing exercises in which she poses dead as if she were the victim of an absurd accident, or instances where she engages in unimaginable acts that literalize suppressed desires, such as the one children have of their teachers bursting out of control, are all part of a set of moments that continue to exist as stories, rumors, and material traces, even after they have occurred. Most recently, Kasper has been staging an ongoing investigation wherein she sets up her studio in the exhibition space, working from the exhibition site and having studio visits and regular activities as audience members are invited into the process of making. Blurring the space between performance and preparation, Kasper puts herself in an unprecedented condition of vulnerability, exposing the artistic process and allowing it to be susceptible to the people who encounter it.

RFA Exhibitions

  1. still life picture plane

    .

    Sep 14–Nov 2, 2013

Selected Images

Golden, 2016
Performance Installation, Redling Fine Art, Los Angeles

A Visual Poem: A Study on Inertia and Anger or Repeater , 2009,
one green pickup truck, trench coat, ski mask, makeup, costume, wood, twigs, one broken tea pot, foam, found pallet, paper, resin, music, words, 25 minutes,
as part of ‘PERFORM! NOW!, Chinatown, Los Angeles.
Photographed by: Ann-Marie Rounkle

Nomadic Studio Practice Experiment – Monte Vista, 2011,
Durational performance installation, 14-days, Monte Vista Projects, Los Angeles, CA.

On Existence: A Visual Poem, A Study on Being , 2010,
Mixed media Full drum kit, cymbals, 1 radio, 2 tape recorders, 5 masks, wig, costume, 4 Piezo microphones, 5 amps, Dremel, 30 minute performance, as part of Gutted Benefit , Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles.
Photographed by Larissa Brantner James

Star Formation, 2016
Installation view, Seattle Art Fair

Star Formation, 2016
Installation view, Seattle Art Fair

On Existence: A Visual Poem, A Study in Being, 2010,
Full drum kit, cymbals, 2 tape recorders, Hi8 video recorder, amps, 2 costumes, masks, four 4 wheel dollies, rope, strapping, wood, screws, contact mic, 30 minute performance, LISTE 15 The Young Art Fair, Basel, February 6th, 2010.
Photographed by Saskia Edens

Music for Hoarders , 2010
Honor Fraser, Los Angeles, September 2 – September 9, 2010, Durational Performance
Photographed by Dawn Kasper

This is how I Fuck my Environment , 2011,
1 hour performance installation, as part of Queering Sex , Human Resources, Los Angeles, CA, 2011.
Photographed by: Kathryn Garcia

18 incidences in 18 parts , 2011
3 hour performance, as part of 3 x 2 x 3 , curated by Dino Dinco, LACE, Los Angeles, CA, April 21, 2011.
Photographed by: Robert Crouch

White Collar Drunk, 2011,
1 hour mobile performance installation,
as part of Trespass Parade , Los Angeles, CA.
Images courtesy of: West of Rome

Become What You Are , 2012,
Performance installation,
curated by Suzy M. Halajian, These are not obligations but I want to (a response in two parts) , CCS Bard College, New York.
Photographed by: Dawn Kasper

Become What You Are , 2012,
Performance installation,
as part of: Episode 2: A Special Form Of Darkness ,
Tramway, Glasgow, February 25, 2012.
Photographed by: Alex Woodward/Arika

This Could be Something if I let it , 2012
98 day durational performance installation, mixed media,
Whitney Biennial 2012.
Photograph by: Rainer Hosch

Everything You Could Ever Want & Be You Already Have & Are , 2012
2 month durational performance installation, mixed media
Cohen Gallery, The Perry and Marty Granoff Center For Creative Arts, Brown University, Providence.
Photographed by: Dawn Kasper

Lost Horizon , 2013,
24 consecutive hour-long performances, as part of Machine Project’s Field Guide to L.A. Architecture , Hotel Shangri-La, Santa Monica.
Stills pulled from video shot by Jimmy Fusil, Kate Parsons, Eva Aguila, Emily Lacy, and Ian Byers-Gamber for Machine Project

A Private Performance (for you), 2013,
Performance installation, house of residents/strangers at Saint-Ouen France, part of Los Angeles Chez Vous , Machine Project, May 13-May 27, 2013.
Images courtesy of Machine Project

The Absurd , Durational Performance Installation,
Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles, September 12-October 26, 2013.
Photographed by: Joshua White

& sun & or THE SHAPE OF TIME , 2014,
Performance installation, April 29 – June 1, 2014,
David Lewis Gallery, New York, 2014.
Images courtesy of: David Lewis

& sun & or THE SHAPE OF TIME , 2014
Performance installation, ADN Collection, Bolzano, Italy
Images courtesy of: Claire Waterworth