Above: Florentine Pietà as Daybed for Unlikely Poets, 2025, Frye Art Museum, photo courtesy of the artist.
"Soy Sauce Packets, Rubber Bands and Dead Batteries”
Thursday, April 8, 4:00 p.m.
Lectures will be in Lawrence Hall, Room 115, 1190 Franklin Boulevard, Eugene, OR 97403.
Lecture videos are archived on YouTube.
Cerny’s sculptures and work on paper start with the idea that “furniture” and “mother” are figures that secure a value (to others) for their potential to hold, display, or be absent-mindedly left with things. Putting form and color to work and entrusting no small part to contingency, these works behave as something like gestural understudies for a play about the day-to-day grinding weariness and joyful slapstick absurdity of human relationships—about trying to Work It Out…or not. The shelf, the rack, the hook, the slot, the vessel: all stand at the ready to be occupied temporarily, until something better comes along. These objects “hold,” literally and metaphorically. A pattern played out over and over in the work is one of holding as the creation of intimacy and belonging, for pleasure, and for self-preservation.
Dawn Cerny has had solo institutional exhibitions at The Frye Museum (2025); The Seattle Art Museum (2021); The Portland Art Museum (2017); and The Henry Art Gallery (2008 and 2017). Her sculptures, works on paper, and collaborative projects have been exhibited in institutions and galleries across North America, including Micki Meng Gallery, San Francisco (2023); F Gallery, Houston (2022); Cooper Cole, Toronto (2018); and MOCA, Los Angeles (2018). She is the recipient of two Washington State Artist Fellowships (2004 & 2017); the Betty Bowen Award (2020); the Bonnie Bronson Visual Arts Fellowship (2022) and the Joan Mitchell Fellowship (2022). Cerny’s works on paper and sculptures are in public collections, including The Walker Art Gallery, SFMOMA, The Frye Art Museum, The Henry Art Gallery, The Portland Art Museum, and The Seattle Art Museum. Dawn Cerny’s work has been written about in Bomb Magazine, KQED, Variable West, Artforum, the International Sculpture Center Blog, The Brooklyn Rail, The Stranger, and The Seattle Times.