Zone A Exhibition Project
Suitable for all ages
Dollar General Drive By, 2011
Video Installation
Chronicling scenarios, minor objects and fragments of the present, artist Tim Davis explores the substance of ephemera and the overlooked. Dollar General Drive By is a poetic documentation of contemporary landscapes and their transformation. Created from slow drive-bys filmed in western New York State that record the illuminated presence of discount stores – always the same franchise, always aglow – the passage of Dollar General Drive By captures a historic shift reflected in the banal repetition of small town streetscapes of the depressed region, as well as the social role played by such sites for communities.
As Davis himself has put it, he is a “photographer who sees unintended derangements of objects,” illuminating everyday social landscapes. Like his earlier work on small-town commercial interests in Retail and his photographs of mundane suburban spaces in cities internationally that comprise his recent New Antiquity series, Dollar General Drive By is a record of changing economic times, and unexpected photographic intentions. Interested in how people find meaning in unremarkable architectures not designed to be noticed, Davis reveals in the margins an underlying poetics of urban spaces.
Tim Davis lives in New York where he teaches at Bard College. Davis received a BA from Bard College and an MFA from Yale University. He has had solo shows in Brussels, Milan, Geneva, Los Angeles, New York, London, Knoxville, and Chicago, and has published three books of photography. Recipient of the 2007-2008 Joseph H. Hazen Rome Prize and 2005 Leopold Godowsky Jr. Color Photography Award, his work is in collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum, The Guggenheim Museum, and Walker Art Center, among others.
121
Emily Street & King Street West (West of University Avenue)
This project is outdoors.