Past, Present & Future

Dread Scott : Past, Present & Future
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 11th, 2017, 5:00pm – 9:00pm
Exhibition Dates: February 11th – March 5th, 2017

For many, our current political climate feels like a moment of great reversion, a time where any progress made towards justice and equality for marginalized people and our country as a whole is on a
trajectory to be quickly swept under the rug by a new leader who embodies an antithesis to this progressive movement. Having devoted much of his life to resisting such structures of power, inter-
disciplinary artist Dread Scott describes his work as, “revolutionary art to propel history forward”. Yet at a time when politics are moving our society backwards, what does it mean for an artist such as Dread Scott to propel history forward? The phrase, like so much of Scott’s practice, is open-ended, suggesting perhaps that Scott’s work aims to collectively push us into new territories, or alternatively that the art functions as a means to literally drive the past into the present, confronting contemporary viewers with painful histories that we’d hoped had become annexed within the pages of history. The works of Dread Scott succeed in performing both interpretations simultaneously, referencing and re- performing painful histories in the hopes of providing a brighter tomorrow. These are chilling reminders of our perpetual haunting by a collective past, illustrating that any attempt to compartmentalize history remains a naive exercise as we are met with rising tides of fascism, continued violence perpetrated against our most marginalized communities, and a litany of ongoing colonial enterprises that threaten vulnerable societies across the globe.
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Dread Scott (b. 1965) is a New York based artist who first received national attention in 1989 for his piece “What is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag?”, receiving condemnation from not only President Bush but much of the US Senate which passed legislation to “protect the flag.” Scott responded by burning flags on the steps of the US Capitol with three other protesters, resulting in a Supreme Court case (“US v. Eichman et al”, 1990) and a landmark First Amendment decision that struck down 1968’s Flag Protection Act.
Dread Scott has shown with MoMA PS1, the Contemporary Art Museum Houston, The Walker Art Center, The Pori Art Museum of Finland, the Museum of Comtemporary African Diasporan Arts in Brooklyn and the Whitney Museum. He’s created public sculptures from New York to Minnesota, and was the recipient of a Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant and a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts among others. His work has graced the cover of Artforum, and has received press from Art in America and The New York Times to Oprah and the Today Show. Scott received a B.F.A. from School of the Art Institute of Chicago. This exhibition marks Dread Scott’s first in San Francisco and with Guerrero Gallery.