Denny Dimin Gallery is pleased to announce Horses for the Trees, a solo exhibition by Dana Sherwood, on view from November 1st to December 7th, 2019 at 39 Lispenard Street, New York. This is the artist’s second solo exhibition at the gallery.

Dana Sherwood is a multimedia artist who examines the expansive topic of the Anthropocene. The artist is best known for preparing elaborate banquets and cakes for local wildlife, the consumption of which she documents with covert video footage and fanciful watercolors. Sherwood’s work creatively examines the complex and intimate relationship between humans and other animals in an increasingly homogenized ecosystem, one which is threatened by climate change and development.

Horses for the Trees is an exhibition of new installation, video, and paintings that continue Sherwood’s exploration of our relationship with animals, namely horses, and the natural world. The exhibition features a large installation in the form of a tent inspired by her recent research in Mongolia exploring herding culture and Shamanism. Inside of the tent, the artist displays her newest video work, Sight Equus Mongolia, which departs from her earlier video works with an expanded body of footage and a more narrative style. The video is an oblique proposal to move away from human exceptionalism as the way of relating to and controlling nature, reflecting upon this as an important endeavor if we hope to avert the most devastating effects of climate change.

The exhibition also features Sherwood’s newest paintings, which move beyond her interest in imaginatively documenting her banquets and installations to exploring historical myths and other new iconography. Best known for working in watercolor on paper, the exhibition additionally includes the artist’s first exhibited oil paintings, as well as watercolors. Sherwood’s paintings feature fabled female figures in combination with animals who have an established iconography in Sherwood’s work, such as horses, raccoons, and dogs. Her subjects include the Greek goddess Persephone, queen of the underworld and instigator of seasons, Alice in Wonderland, explorer of a fantasy world populated by anthropomorphic creatures, and Medusa, the much maligned, mythological woman with snakes for hair, who could turn men to stone. The paintings are Sherwood’s largest and most expansive in terms of subject matter to date, and show her unique ability to create meaningful fantasies within the fabric of the natural world.

Dana Sherwood lives in Copake, New York and received her BFA from the University of Maine, Farmington. Dana Sherwood has exhibited in dOCUMENTA 13 and at Mass MoCA, Storm King, Nassau County Museum of Art, Flux Factory, Socrates Sculpture Park, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, and Marianne Boesky Gallery, among others. Sherwood has had solo exhibitions at Kepler Art Conseil (Paris, 2017), Denny Gallery (New York, 2016), and Nagel-Draxler Reisbureau Galerie (Cologne, 2015). Her work has been featured or reviewed in publications including The New York Times, Forbes, Hyperallergic, Surface, The Village Voice, Food & Wine, The Huffington Post, Art F City, and the Miami Rail. Sherwood has received several prestigious residencies including Swing Space by LMCC, Pilchuck Glass School, and OMI International Arts Center.

Catalog available with an essay by Chelsea Kinchin-Smith
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