Torkwase Dyson: Scalar opens at Bennington College, VT

“Scalar” features new paintings, drawings, and sculptures by artist Torkwase Dyson, known for her use of abstraction and modes of inquiry from art, architecture, and geography to explore the production of form within contemporary economic and political climates. With works created in response to the Bennington context, Dyson takes inspiration from the geometric and mathematic formations of the late artist and architectural designer Tony Smith, whose tenure as an instructor at the College, from 1958 to 1961, proved significant in his development as a sculptor. In turn, Dyson approaches her time at Bennington as an opportunity for deep reflection on the properties of scale, dimension, and geometry. Of particular interest is the progressive growth of multifaceted forms and systems into structures whose scope or complexity can defy comprehension.

Artworks on view in Usdan Gallery, including a 12-by-20-foot diptych painted on site, demonstrate the artist’s ongoing development of a vocabulary of forms and gestures that speaks to the history of environmental and spatial politics leading to the Anthropocene era of global crisis. With its breadth of concerns and consideration of Smith’s legacy, Dyson’s exhibition extends the history of formal abstraction at Bennington, finding new urgency for modernist traditions rooted in the College.

September 18 - December 15, 2018