PROCESS FASHION PR // BLOG

at MINUS SPACE {98 4th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231}

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Julian Dashper was one of New Zealand’s most accomplished contemporary artists — he died a year ago.

In his work Julian often reduced things to essential elements, put like with like and delineated opposites. It was therefore unmistakably a Dashper thread that neatly tied together a group of his colleagues and friends in Brooklyn last Saturday afternoon at the opening of It Is Life at Minus Space — an exhibition consisting of heartfelt written remembrances of Julian’s life and work. Julian would have chuckled as at the preview many of us unraveled connections he had attempted to make between each of us in prior years — introductions, crossed paths and shared opportunities.

Julian’s work focused on the histories, theories and more general or popular ideas of abstraction, conceptualism and minimalism as a working methodology. His practice took many forms, from painting to performance. As an International artist living and working in New Zealand, Julian’s work, and life, also dealt with the duality of local/global, as seen in his work Future Call, the sole work presented amongst the written tributes that make up It Is Life at Minus Space. Future Call consists of a single telephone installed in the gallery that is periodically called from New Zealand, 16 hours ahead of New York City — a call from the future, only to be left ringing and unanswered. I think we all fought the desire to ‘pick-up’ as the phone rang through our collective reminiscing, I  for one am curious to know what the future holds….

Julian traveled broadly and had friends and allies across the globe, the 70 or more ‘personal notes, memories, anecdotes, criticism, correspondence, poems, and elegies’ from around the world and on display at Minus Space in Brooklyn are testament to that fact. Incredibly personal and poignant, each note held a unique story, the contributors include: Soledad Arias, Marcus Bering, Channa Boon, Ralf Brög, Henry Brown & Millicent Borges Accardi, Mary-Louise Browne, Vicente Butron, Melanie Crader & Mick Johnson, Christoph Dahlhausen, Kasarian Dane, Judy Darragh & Rosanna Albertini, Christopher Dean, Matthew Deleget & Rossana Martinez, Ali Duffey, Daniel Feingold, Linda Francis, Alicia Frankovich, Zipora Fried, Andrea Gaskin, Daniel Göttin & Gerda Maise, Michelle Grabner, Billy Gruner & Sarah Keighery, Vaughan Gunson, Lynne Harlow, Miriam Harris, Gilbert Hsiao, William Hsu, Simon Ingram, Kyle Jenkins, Ian Jervis, Jeffrey Cortland Jones, James Juszczyk, Steve Karlik, Mark Kirby, WJM Kok, Keira Kotler, Elodie Lesourd, Stephen Little, Joshua Lux, MariaMaria, Jackie Meier, Moreno Miorelli, Dane Mitchell, Victoria Munro, Geoff Newton, John Nixon, Rose Nolan, Salvatore Panatteri, Carrie Patterson, Nathan Pohio, Gwynneth Porter, Mel Prest, Linda Roche, Layla Rudneva-Mackay, Erik Saxon, Karen Schifano, Marie Shannon, Sandra Smith, Barbara Strathdee, Robert Swain, David Thomas, Mandy Thomsett-Taylor, Tilman, Jan van der Ploeg, Machiel van Soest, Erica van Zon, Jan Maarten Voskuil, Marcus Williams, Emi Winter, Rachael Wren, Patricia Zarate, and others.

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Julian Dashper was born on February 29, 1960 (leap year day). During his career, he mounted more than 140 solo exhibitions of his work worldwide, including in New Zealand, Australia, Asia, Europe, and the United States. In 2001, he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to be an artist in residence at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, TX. A 25-year retrospective of Julian’s work, entitled Midwestern Unlike You and Me, curated by Christopher Cook and David Raskin, traveled the United States during 2005-2006, making stops at the Sioux City Art Center, IA; Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, NE; and Ulrich Museum of Art, KS. Julian’s work was included in our comprehensive group exhibition MINUS SPACE at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in NYC in 2008-2009. Julian died on July 30, 2009, and is survived by his wife Marie Shannon and their teenage son Leo.

to see more of Julian’s work:
www.suecrockford.com/artists/images.asp?aid=28

To see more of the show check out the James Kalm report:
http://www.youtube.com/user/jameskalmroughcut#p/a/u/0/bzKQWVvuIdk

To read a touching remembrance of Julian:
http://cherylbernstein.blogspot.com/2009/08/signs-to-live-by.html

or go to Minus Space’s site:
http://www.minusspace.com/category/currentexhibition/

Words by Tana Mitchell