Dean Baldwin Lew
Canada
Dean Baldwin Lew (b. 1973) gambols across media. Toronto-born and Montreal-based, he iterates on themes of hospitality, conviviality, performative still-life, and the structural discrepancies around which we pivot. His practice, which often positions agrarian means within an artworld setting, works to unsettle the structural and social dynamics of a community that privileges its exclusion, its difference. He trades the expected lobster for an invasive crawfish, in River Restaurant; he landlocks a yacht -for the benefit of those without yachts- in Queen West Yacht Club; he fashions Chalet from a museum's previous installation refuse. Moonlighting as host he often passes the bartender's shoulder cloth to friends and visitors, removing himself from its service so others might navigate their newfound work. Applying a palette of aristocracy, he sneaks us in and hoists us up, that we might enjoy the view.
Baldwin has worked in New York, Rome, Tasmania, London & Mumbai, among others.
