Jeremy Dean

There is a term in archeology known as anastylosis, defined as: the archeological reassembly of ruined monuments from fallen or decayed fragments, incorporating new materials when necessary. This is very close to a description of how I see my work, except that I often do this process in reverse. I take monuments or symbols and break them down into fragments, incorporate some new material and put them back together as objects that I feel confront issues critical to contemporary society.

Like an archeologist these works are carefully researched with elements excavated from disparate places in geography, time and memory, then reinterpreted and reassembled as highly crafted objects that carry an underlying sense of decay. I very much believe in the necessity of art as a way to understand the world and like Ernst Ficher that “art in a decaying society, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay.”

Futurama Series

For this series I took a working HUMMER H2, cut in half and reassembled the pieces as a working stagecoach. The idea was inspired by Hoover Carts of the Great Depression where after the stock market crash of 1929 people were no longer able to make payments on their newly financed cars, or buy fuel or tires, so the cars sat idol. In the rural American south the solution became to cut the car in half and hitch it up to a horse. The resulting contraptions became known as Hoover Carts after American President Hoover who was blamed for the depression. This work becomes a satirical prediction of the future by combining this obscure bit of Americana with the optimism of GM’s 1939 World’s Fair exhibit titled the Futurama, in which the “better world of tomorrow” was envisioned because of the automobile.

Built during the height of the current recession, the CEO Stage Coach not only references financial collapse, but also our reliance on a consumption based oil economy and environmental neglect, raising questions about modernity and progress.

Rended Flag Series

For this series I have taken apart single Americans flags string by string, completely disassembling them and then reassembling them into two separate flags made only of vertical and horizontal strings respectively. The end of each string is threaded through a needle and then placed over prints of polarizing imagery. I feel that the extreme polarization we are currently experiencing: socially, economically, and politically is literally rending the fabric of America, so this work is a physical representation of the state of the Union. For me these vertical and horizontal strings once separated become paradigms for viewing the world, that once polarized as opposites can never fully integrate.

In addition to the physical flags I have abstracted the strings into grids that have been screen printed over polarizing imagery as a print series. This felt very natural to the work as some of the imagery started off as posters, which were appropriated and re-­‐imagined through the grid of these opposing world views.