David Schafer

David Schafer (born 1955) is an American visual artist based in New York. He attended The Art Institute of Kansas City, Missouri from 1973–75, received a B.A. from the University of Missouri, Kansas City in 1979 and an M.F.A. in Sculpture from the University of Texas, Austin in 1983.

Schafer works across multiple platforms of production including collaborations with architects, graphic designers, voice actors, digital engineers, fabricators, and sound studios. Schafer’s work is driven by a wide range of theoretical and personal references, which manifests mostly around the idea of site, language, and the built environment. Appropriating from the vocabulary and motifs of Modernism, and an array of idiosyncratic subjects from popular culture and theory, Schafer develops projects that are sculptural as well as text, graphic, and sound based. Schafer’s work intertwines language with architectural form as a critical exercise of spatial grammar and narrative structures.

Exhibitions

In addition to several public art projects, Schafer’s work has been shown in solo exhibitions at Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Santa Monica, Sara Meltzer Gallery, New York, Works on Paper, Inc, Los Angeles, and PS1, Long Island City, New York, Van Rooy Gallery, Netherlands.

His work has been presented in numerous group exhibitions including those at Lawrimore Project, Seattle, WA, The Sculpture Center, New York, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY, The Baltimore Museum of Art, Williamson Gallery, Art Center College of Design, Los Angeles, George Adams Gallery, New York, Artists Space], White Columns, The Drawing Center, New York, The Luckman Fine Arts Gallery, California State University, Long Beach Art Museum, Los Angeles, Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA, The De Vleeshal, Netherlands.

In 2006, Schafer was awarded a One Percent for the Arts Commission for the Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, CA, and in 1989, Schafer received an artist award in Sculpture from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Schafer’s work has been published in several exhibition catalogues as well as; Art issues, Flash Art, Sculpture Magazine, New Art Examiner, Art and Text, LA Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Art Papers, The New York Times, and The New Yorker. His sound works have been written about in New York Press, The Anti-Fun Magazine of Belgium, Cabinet Magazine and his own writings have appeared in Art Papers, X-tra, Cool and Strange Music Magazine, Exotica/Etcetera, The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest and Documents Journal.

Public projects

• 2006 Separated United Forms, Huntington Memorial Out Patient Pavilion, Pasadena, CA.
• 2005 D-Play: IT House, “Outfit” window scrim proposals, taalmankoch Architecture, Los Angeles, CA
• 2004 Futureways-The Middelburg Triennial, De Vleeshal, Middelburg, Holland
• 2004 Treble, The Sculpture Center, LIC, NY
• 2000 Cluster 38, KBond, Los Angeles, CA
• 1995 Reading Rooms, Lauren Wittels Gallery, New York City
• 1993 New Century Trellis, Public Art Fund. MetroTech Center, Brooklyn, NY.
• 1993 Pastoral Mirage, Prospect Art Alliance, Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY.
• 1991 Liberty Prop, Public Art Fund, City Hall Park, New York City, NY.
• 1989 Model Q, Sculpture Chicago, City Front Plaza, Chicago, IL.
• 1988 Plaza of the First Reader, Public Art Fund, Columbus Park, Brooklyn, NY
• 1988 Outdoor Sculpture, Fulton Ferry State Park, Brooklyn, NY. Public Art Fund
• 1988 Altered Sites, Fairmont Park, Philadelphia, PA

External links

• David Schafer Website
• David Schafer blog
• David Schafer on Ubu Web
• David Schafer with Volume Projects

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Name	Schafer, David
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Date of birth	1955
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