Gallery Experience: Parable

For this gallery intervention, David Burr and Connor Walden have created an instructional pamphlet to be distributed as a supplement to typical viewer experience at the Henry. The guide enlists performative acts and offers comparative questions for understanding the 2018 MFA show. It offers a reflection on the facets and functions of religion that are innate to society and social interaction, and how religion and secularism are trapped in a net of social pressures, politics, and a (possibly) futile pursuit of (objective) beauty.

David C. Burr is an artist from Massachusetts studying for his MFA in the Painting and Drawing department of University of Washington. He received his BFA from University of Massachusetts Dartmouth where he worked with faculty and the Office of Undergraduate Research to create drawings exploring the conditions of vision when confronted by the fragmentary nature of time. In 2017 he showed in a two person show with Emily Franicola in New Bedford, MA called “hypertexts” illustrating disjunction between source and authorship. Combining these interests he has begun to use film and sculpture to offer programmatic and experimental events to his audiences. Through these explorative modes of creation and collaboration David has continued to develop his interest in the effect of perceptual cognitive dysfunction on realizing the self in a growingly decentralized social ecosystem.

Connor Walden (b. 1994) is a conceptual artist from Dallas, Texas and currently lives in Seattle and is a graduate student at the University of Washington studying Three-dimensional Forum (3d4m). Connor received two degrees from The University of Texas at Austin in Studio Art (BA) and Marketing (BBA). His work focuses on the social and spiritual constructs of religion, particularly Christianity, and its affect on the American political, social, and personal landscapes. The business acumen informs the examination of the relationship between religion, money, and business through the use of marketing strategy as a performative tool. Alongside performance, Connor utilizes sculpture, installation, social practice, collaboration, and other media to expand the examination into provocative experience.

This program is a result of the Henry’s invitation to artists exhibiting in the 2018 University of Washington MFA + MDes Thesis Exhibition to utilize public programming as a generative tool for expanding upon themes and concepts found within their work.