With her research-based installations, drawings and sculptures, conceptual artist Jennifer Dalton wrestles with social anxiety and the mutually uncomfortable extremes within which she observes herself vacillating: guilt vs. resentment, fairness vs. loyalty, loser vs. pig. Viewers are often invited to assess themselves and each other by interacting with her works, continuing the exploration of cultural values and social interactions that Dalton has been engaged in for over two decades.
Dalton collects and evaluates cultural information, often choosing themes in an attempt to test a hypothesis. She organizes collected data into categories, searching for patterns, anomalies and meaning and often applying low-tech methods such as hand-counting and subjective categorization to arrive at personal but well-documented conclusions in the form of works of art.
Dalton holds a BA in Fine Art from UCLA and an MFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Her work has been exhibited at Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany; the Wellin Museum of Art, Hamilton, NY; Museum of Capitalism, New York, Boston and Oakland; Flag Art Foundation, New York; Center Galleries, Detroit; Museum Brandhorst, Munich, Germany; Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles; and Isolyatsia Foundation, Donetsk, Ukraine.
At MacDowell, Jenniferworked on components of "a Task no one assigned", an exhibition to be shown at Plus Ultra Gallery in Brooklyn, NY, in February-March 2002. She is a 2002 recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant in painting.
