Dennis John Ashbaugh (born 1946 in
Red Oak, Iowa
Red Oak is a city in, and the county seat of, Montgomery County, Iowa, Montgomery County, Iowa, United States, located along the Nishnabotna River, East Nishnabotna River. The population was 5,362 in the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, a d ...
) is an American painter and artist who lives and works in New York City. He was the first artist to employ DNA marking patterns in paintings, in his 1992 work Designer Gene. Ashbaugh's use of light and color in his large scale paintings of autoradiographs have drawn comparison to Mark Rothko.
Early life
Ashbaugh moved with his family to Southern California at the age of six. He earned a Bachelor of Arts and a master's degree from the
University of California
The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...
. He moved to New York City in 1969 to take up residence near leading artists and began exhibiting his paintings in galleries throughout the city and internationally.
Awards and exhibitions
Ashbaugh received a Creative Artists Public Service (CAPS) grant from the
New York State Council on the Arts
The New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) is an arts council serving the U.S. state of New York. It was established in 1960 through a bill introduced in the New York State Legislature by New York State Senator MacNeil Mitchell (1905–1996), ...
in 1975, and a
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...
in 1976.
He has had solo exhibitions at the
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...
,
the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
,
MoMA PS1
MoMA PS1 is a contemporary art institution located in Court Square in the Long Island City neighborhood in the borough of Queens, New York City. In addition to its exhibitions, the institution organizes the Sunday Sessions performance series, th ...
,
the
Seattle Art Museum
The Seattle Art Museum (commonly known as SAM) is an art museum located in Seattle, Washington, United States. It operates three major facilities: its main museum in downtown Seattle; the Seattle Asian Art Museum (SAAM) in Volunteer Park on Cap ...
, the
Orange County Museum of Art
The Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located on the campus of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California. The museum's collection comprises more than 4,500 objects, with a concentration o ...
,
La Jolla Museum of Art, and the
Americas Society
The Americas Society is an organization dedicated to education, debate, and dialogue on the Americas. It is located at 680 Park Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and was established by David Rockefeller in 1965. The Americas Society pr ...
. He has exhibited internationally in London, Paris, Brussels, Tehran, Capri, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, and Slovenia.
In 2007, Ashbaugh had a 200-page book retrospective at the
Institut Valencià d'Art Modern
The Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (; es, link=no, Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno; English: "Valencian Institute of Modern Art"), also known by the acronym IVAM, was the first center of modern art created in Spain, opening in 1989 in the ...
(IVAM) entitled "Say Goodbye to The Past", including a monograph and catalog by art historian
Barbara Rose
Barbara Ellen Rose (June 11, 1936December 25, 2020) was an American art historian, art critic, curator and college professor. Rose's criticism focused on 20th-century American art, particularly minimalism and abstract expressionism, as well as S ...
. The
National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...
mounted a survey of Ashbaugh's recent paintings in 2006 with a full color catalog by
J.D. Talasek.
Themes and influences
Dominant themes of Ashbaugh's works are computers, clones, DNA, networks, and viruses (computer and biological), though he does not use computers to create these works.
In 1992, Ashbaugh collaborated with science fiction and cyberpunk novelist
William Gibson
William Ford Gibson (born March 17, 1948) is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as ''cyberpunk''. Beginning his writing career in the late 1970s, his ...
on the electronic poem, ''
Agrippa (A Book of the Dead)''.
Ashbaugh cites Gibson and fellow cyberpunk novelist
Bruce Sterling
Michael Bruce Sterling (born April 14, 1954) is an American science fiction author known for his novels and short fiction and editorship of the ''Mirrorshades'' anthology. In particular, he is linked to the cyberpunk subgenre.
Sterling's first ...
as key influences.
Current work
Ashbaugh is currently working on a new series of painting entitled "Hiding In Plain Sight", which focus on privacy issues, mass surveillance, and genetic databases in the context of 21st century art. Ashbaugh has produced a series of prints and drawings and large group of mosquito trap sculptures. He is working on a book of the same title.
Personal life
He is the longtime companion of author
Alexandra Penney
Alexandra Penney is an American artist, journalist and author.
Biography
Penney was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Greek-American parents. Upon graduation from Smith College with a BA in Philosophy and MA in Studio Art and Criticism, Penney s ...
. He has been characterized by the New York Times as a "charismatic ex‐surfer whose address book can probably hold its own against that of the most aggressive jet set type".
References
Further reading
*
External links
*
Dennis Ashbaughat Paradise Now
at Wingate Studio
WebsiteWebsite of Dennis Ashbaugh
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ashbaugh, Dennis
1946 births
Living people
20th-century American painters
21st-century American painters
American male painters
Artists from New York (state)
People from Red Oak, Iowa
20th-century American male artists
21st-century American male artists