Jason Lahr
Assistant Professor, Painting
Contact
400 Riley Hall
Notre Dame, IN 46556
ph: 574.631.5605
e: jason.r.lahr.2@nd.edu
Degrees
M.F.A., School of Visual Arts, Pennsylvania State University, 1999
B.F.A., Clarion University, Clarion, PA, 1997
Artistic Profile
Jason Lahr received his B.F.A. in painting from Clarion University and his M.F.A. in drawing and painting from Penn State University. He is represented by Packer Schopf Gallery in Chicago.
Lahr’s paintings, drawings, and installations integrate darkly comic texts with appropriated images in ever shifting narratives of identity as constructed by popular culture.
Selected Exhibitions include: DEATHMETALHIPPIEKILLER, Packer Schopf Gallery, Chicago, IL (solo), 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; 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; New, Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, IN; Culture of Class, Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore, MD.
Statement
I build narratives out of written texts and appropriated images. I think of it as using other voices to speak, balancing between believing the images and critiquing them. Formally, the work reflects an interest in addressing the issue of narrative painting within the exploded scope of our fragmentary world. Taking their cues from contemporary/postmodern fiction, film theory, and semiotics, the paintings position the viewer at the core of the construction of narrative, weaving an intertextual thread of references and allusions. Simultaneously, the work explores the construction of masculine identity by/through mass culture as manifested in Generation X and filtered through feminism and identity politics/criticism. It’s a bit like a vulture picking through a mountain of boy scout manuals, cd covers, hunting and fishing magazines, and related miscellany, savoring the tasty bits and creating a tangle of hypertexts among the images, the texts, and the “world.” Really, I’m just trying to not choke on the voices.
