Dawn Kasper

Education and work

Kasper received a B.F.A in sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1999 and was accepted into graduate school at the University of California, Los Angeles directly after. She received an M.F.A in New Genres in 2003.

While at UCLA, Kasper studied with Chris Burden, Paul McCarthy, Pipilotti Rist, Catherine Opie, John Baldessari and Jason Rhoades. After graduating she was represented by Anna Helwing Gallery in Los Angeles for three years. She was then picked up by Circus Gallery and had her first solo show, titled Life and Death, in 2007.

From 2001 to 2007 Dawn Kasper recreated Death Scene. The project was titled "The Evil Series" or "Death Scenes." The work was inspired in part by Weegee's crime scene photography and the B horror film genre.

In 2010 Kasper created Music for Hoarders, originally performed at Honor Fraser Gallery, and then recreated the work in 2012 at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena.

Kasper participated in the 2012 Whitney Biennial with "This Could be Something if I Let It", in which she lived and worked in the gallery space, calling it an "nomadic studio." Each day for the duration of the exhibit (three months), Kasper had studio visits, made work, and interacted with the public, wearing away the difference between public and private, artist and visitor.

In her 2014 solo exhibition & sun & or THE SHAPE OF TIME at David Lewis, New York, Kasper presented elements and material activated by performance, exhuming “...the presence of a shaman with great powers, someone able to tap into something deep, maybe dark, and to be watched carefully.”

Kasper will be participating in the 2017 Venice Biennale, Viva Arte Viva, May 13 - November 16, 2017.