• HOME
  • ABOUT
  • PRESS
  • CURATORIAL & WRITING
  • CONTACT
  • STNDRD EXHIBITIONS

SAGE DAWSON

  • HOME
  • ABOUT
  • PRESS
  • CURATORIAL & WRITING
  • CONTACT
  • STNDRD EXHIBITIONS
INSTAGRAM
  • One North, Topping Out Day
  • Warm Welcome
  • Stopgap
  • Flying Carpets
  • Counterpublic
  • Drift Field
  • Nameplate
  • Common Shift
  • We Stand
  • Comfort Station
  • Columns Like Columns
  • Piling
  • Brick Myth
  • Little Tavern
  • Everywhere Around Us
  • Not Unlike a Buried City
  • Dust
  • I Dream of a House. .
  • Emblem
  • DEMO Project
  • Ghost
  • Collections
  • Kinetograph
  • In Memoriam
  • Mary Street
  • Natural Disasters
  • Everything Hot Pink
  • Books
  • Timelines and Hair Maps
  • Itinerary Maps
  • Points of View

One North, Topping Out Day

April 1, 2019 sagedawson

Exhibition text courtesy James McAnally.

One North, Topping Out Day engages a complex history of architectural erasure and the undulating developments of the Gateway Arch grounds. Referencing the final triangular keystone piece of the Arch (named One North), the piece is site-responsively scaled to The Luminary’s vaulted ceilings, replicating the act of standing underneath the Arch as it shimmers overhead.

Dawson uses the device of a ‘magic carpet’ to tell a narrative of the marginalization and monumentality of this historic site, engaging the long tradition of storytelling through carpets and tapestries to render it readable. The patterning throughout the piece is drawn from Saint Louis and other regional architecture from the 19th and 20th centuries, including the historic riverfront architecture cleared for the creation of the Arch – a pattern continued throughout Saint Louis as the city further marginalizes existing communities for ‘transformational’ projects. As these numerous references are interwoven we may imagine past and present structures remaining on the site simultaneously, collapsing its complex histories into a single surface in order to help us see our inherited present more clearly.

Previous | Next
One North

One North, Topping Out Day, Relief Print, Monotype, Acrylic on Canvas, 2019

One North

One North, Topping Out Day, Relief Print, Monotype, Acrylic on Canvas, 2019

One North

One North, Topping Out Day, Relief Print, Monotype, Acrylic on Canvas, 2019

One North

One North, Topping Out Day, Relief Print, Monotype, Acrylic on Canvas, 2019

One North

One North, Topping Out Day, Relief Print, Monotype, Acrylic on Canvas, 2019

One North

One North, Topping Out Day, Relief Print, Monotype, Acrylic on Canvas, 2019

One North

One North, Topping Out Day, Relief Print, Monotype, Acrylic on Canvas, 2019

All content © 2006-2021+ by Sage Dawson