Come to an artist's talk by
Jason Lahr
Jason Lahr is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Art, Art History & Design at the University of Notre Dame. He is represented by Packer/Schopf Gallery where his recent one-person exhibition garnered critical attention, including in Beautiful Decay, New City and Bad at Sports. More of his work can be seen at http://www.jasonlahr.com/
Jason Lahr received his M.F.A. in drawing and painting from Penn State University and his B.F.A. in painting from Clarion University. Since 2004, he has been represented by Packer Schopf Gallery in Chicago. Lahr’s paintings combine darkly comic texts with appropriated images, creating shifting narratives of working class male identity as influenced by popular culture. The images are pulled from a wide range of popular and sub-cultural ephemera while the texts are fragments that suggest their excision from a larger story, and give the reader/viewer flashbulb glimpses at moments of narrative action. Centering on female characters that occupy positions of authority and male characters who are injured, inept, defeated, or perplexed by their dealings with women, the texts and images combine to form narratives which question the wash of expectations and assumptions we experience and create through popular culture.
Lahr’s book Words for Paintings (Stepsister Press, 2010) collects twelve years worth of texts alongside reproductions of his work and in-progress views from his studio. His essay “Abstraction as Appropriation” is included in the comprehensive catalog for Canadian abstract painter John Kissick’s exhibition A Nervous Decade at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery in Kitchener, Ontario.
Lahr currently holds a Visiting Assistant Professor in painting position at the University of Notre Dame.
Selected Exhibitions include: DEATHMETALHIPPIEKILLER (solo), Packer Schopf Gallery, Chicago, IL;Tectonic/Tapola/Lahr, SELLOUT Gallery, Minneapolis, MN; Open Source Deathmatch (solo), Soma Gallery, Fort Wayne, IN; Arrested Development, Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, IN;White Male, Packer Schopf Gallery, Chicago, IL; Bridge Art Fair, Packer Schopf Gallery, Miami, FL;Beastyfeast, Arlington Center for the Arts, Arlington, MA; A Knock at the Door, Cooper Union, New York, NY; Narrative, Cartoon, Zine, Strip Show; Urban Institute for Contemporary Art, Grand Rapids, MI; Fort Wayne Biennial, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN; As Small as Possible, Zg Gallery, Chicago, IL; Riding With Pike (solo), Fugitive Art Center, Nashville, TN;American Eyes, Gallery Eleven50, Atlanta, GA; Biennial 21, South Bend Regional Museum of Art, South Bend, IN; Culture of Class, Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore, MD.