User:Hathoms/Dave Cole (artist)

Dave Cole (born October 14, 1975 in Lebanon, New Hampshire) is a contemporary American sculptor who gained international recognition for provocative and whimsical responses to American patriotism, industry, and domestic life with work such as "The Knitting Machine" (Mass MoCA 2005)and "Flags of the World" (Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum 2008). Cole explores these controversial themes and unique construction techniques to create playfully subversive images and objects. He is represented by DODGEgallery in New York.

Life
Dave Cole, born 1975 in Lebanon, New Hampshire, is a graduate from The Putney School and received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Brown University in 2000. Cole has since enjoyed exposure in the United States and internationally as well as in permanent gallery and private collections. His studio is currently located in Providence, Rhode Island.

Work
Materials and techniques are intrinsically tied in Cole's work; process is paramount in one of his more renowned projects, his 2006 "Knitting Machine" show at MassMOCA, while other projects such as “Trophy Wives” and “Toy Soldier Flags” are emboldened by the found-object and assemblage nature of their construction. For instance, Cole embues toys and teddy bears with a shocking tension, making them artifacts of war. Nuit Banai, in Modern Painters, writes “one may safely assume the ‘war on terror' has wound its way into the inner recesses of the collective American psyche.” Additional articles repeatedly reference the various forms of American iconography that Cole’s work appropriates. ArtForum reports in its 2008 review of Cole's solo show at the judi rotenberg gallery, "Dave Cole blurs the lines between homespun and manufactures, innocent and subversive, nostalgic and postindustrial."

June 30, 2005, Cole began an ambitious installation at MASS MoCA—his project, The Knitting Machine, comprising two excavators specially fitted with massive 20' knitting needles, was one part of a three-part exhibition of Cole's work at the museum. In addition to the installation, MASS MoCA showed Cole's Memorial Flag (Toy Soldiers) (2005), a 5 ' × 9½' foot flag crafted of 18,000 plastic toy soldiers wrestling beneath a glaze of red, white and blue; and The Evolution of the Knitting Needle Through Modern Warfare (2001), a convincing display of hypothetical army-issue knitting needles from the Civil War through the first Persian Gulf War.

The Big Knit vandalization
In the fall of 2009, Dave Cole traveled to Melbourne, Australia to construct a large-scale "knit graffiti" for the Big West Contemporary Arts Festival. Dave Cole and a team of twenty-five volunteers spent weeks knitting 1.5 tonnes of pink and orange PVC barrier tape and rigging it over the Stock Bridge, a historic disused railway bridge spanning the Maribyrnong River. The installation was vandalized the night of its completion with scissors and knives. Shortly thereafter, Cole was announced the winner of the $25,000 Rappoport Prize, sponsored by Phyllis and Jerome Lyle Rappaport Foundation and the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, Massachusetts.

Solo Exhibition in New York City
In October 2010, Cole had his first solo exhibition in New York, NY with DODGEgallery. Cole's first survey catalogue was produced in conjunction with the exhibition and included an introduction by Nick Capasso and essays by Christian Viveros-Fauné and Francine Koslow Miller. The exhibition, UNREAL CITY, has forthcoming reviews in Art in America and ARTnews in 2011. It was also covered by Bloomberg and Artlog. Cole exhibited a mix of work for the exhibition and it was his most somber work to date. Highlights included Flags of the World, Leaves of Grass, and Salt Print, La Somme (which was produced with the bulk of the artist's Rappaport Prize winnings).

Selected exhibitions

 * 2010: DAVE COLE: UNREAL CITY at DODGEgallery, NYC
 * The Big West Arts Festival, Melbourne, Australia, the Big Knit, 2009
 * The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut, Dave Cole: Flags of the World, 2009
 * 21C Museum, Louisville, Kentucky, Envisioning Conflict, 2009
 * judi rotenberg gallery, Boston, MA, All American, 2008
 * Mass MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts, Made at MASS MoCA, 2007
 * Vestlanske Kunstindustrimuseum, Bergen, Norway; Bomundsfabriken, 2007
 * Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY, Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting (Traveling), 2007
 * Indiana State Museum, Indiana, Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting (Traveling), 2008
 * Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, AZ, Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting (Traveling), 2009
 * judi rotenberg gallery, Boston, Trophies and Monuments, 2006
 * MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA. Dave Cole: The Knitting Machine and Other Work, 2005
 * DeCordova Museum of Contemporary Art, Lincoln, MA DeCordova Annual Exhibition, 2003
 * The Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI, Crisis Response, 2002

Permanent collections

 * 21C Museum, Kentucky
 * RISD Museum, Rhode Island
 * MASS MoCA
 * Jaermuseet Vitenfabrikken, Norway
 * Danforth Museum of Art, Massachusetts
 * Wellington Management, Boston