The Invisible Dog is pleased to present Stephen Morrison’s first solo exhibition. Morrison, a longtime lover of dogs, had an epiphany two years ago while working on a painted portrait of his childhood pet. He realized he could use dogs as a motif to convey the human condition and arrive at more universal emotions than with people. He began creating nothing but art with dogs and has used the culmination of these years to build this installation.
Dog Show #1: The Dinner Party features 16 life-sized humanoid dogs that revel, sleep, and misbehave at an elegant yet excessive feast reminiscent of the notorious gatherings that Morrison and his partner have historically been known to throw. Made of clay and plaster, each guest is a variation of the same character, all wearing white button-down shirts, indigo jeans, and looks of a desperate search for pleasure. Special editions of his extremely successful paintings and food sculptures have been seamlessly integrated into the immersive environment. Never has it been truer that people have an unexpressed animal side, desperate for release. We’ve been confined for too long.
This exhibition is co-presented by The Invisible Dog Art Center and the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) and part of the Armory Show 2021 VIP Program.
Special Thanks
Frank DeFalco, Sourabh Gupta, Sabrina Guzman, Linda Herschenfeld, Zoë Moldenhauer, Maeve Sherican, Tuçe Yasak, Stephen Morrison II, Debbie Morrison, Emma Sulkowicz, Lotfi Family, Shona McAndrew, Steven & William Ladd, Oliver Jeffers, Aaron Ruff, Sam Fisher, and Arly Maulana.
An essay for the exhibition by Emma Sulkowicz
Stephen Morrison and Emma Sulkowicz in 2014.
It was a breezy, overcast day in May 2014. I was so late that the Yale Norfolk Summer Residency faculty had to kick things off without me. This is why everyone knew who I was before I arrived. Each participant was a rising senior in college and hailed from a different university; I was the Columbia snob making 24 eager art-prodigies wait for me to grace them with my presence.
Stephen (Laguna College of Art and Design) hated me the moment he saw me. I was a tall, lanky, ethnically ambiguous mixed-race Asian girl with bleached blonde hair, a bright, wide, Invisalign smile, gaudy flower-print balloon pants, a thrift store acid-wash denim jacket in gray, and a loud, performative laugh. An obvious New Yorker, I was anathema to his remote smalltown sensibilities. Like myself, Stephen was tall, lanky, and had bright skin, but his vibe was completely different. He was quiet, shy, wore brown tortoise rim glasses, and dressed in earth tones that matched his walnut colored hair –– a palette conceivably native to his hometown, Rockland, Maine. He had a slim gap between his big front teeth as if to punctuate how endearing he looked. He vowed to avoid me at all costs.
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At the Columbia visual arts program, everyone’s slavish devotion to the hegemony of art theory had obliterated the need for us to be good with our hands. Students who could draw a realistic picture or properly expose a photo were rare, while those who could cite Michel Foucault to legitimize their own faeces were abundant. This was why, on the second night of the program, when we each gave a slide presentation on our artwork, Stephen’s paintings blew me away; they were shockingly, refreshingly aesthetic. Though his photorealistic renderings demonstrated how deft he was at his craft, he was the kind of genius who didn’t seem to be aware of his own talent. He kept his eyes down, hardly knowing what to say about his work. Determined to be his friend, I tried chatting him up after the event and couldn't understand why he was so evasive.
We were both runners, so the head of the program suggested that we register for the town’s five kilometer race. The morning of, I found Stephen in the cafeteria and asked him whether he’d planned on joining. He said he was considering it. Given the fact that he was clad in running gear, I sensed that he was more game than he let on. It took minimal coaxing to persuade him, but whenever he tells this story, he claims that I dragged him to the starting line.
There had been a miscommunication; the race was actually five miles. By the time we had talked, sweated, and limped our way to the finish, Stephen no longer disliked me. High on endorphins, we hopped in his rust-colored Honda Element, drove off to some remote abandoned schoolhouse and drew wildflowers for the rest of the day. We’ve been glued together ever since.
Much like many of my Columbia professors, our Yale instructors were preoccupied with formal abstraction and political commentary; nothing was lauded for looking nice. The art we made at Yale Norfolk was often only valid insofar as it ghettoized us. Mine was nothing more than my experience as a rape survivor. Stephen was forced to explore his queerness. His magnum opus at that program, a painting of an ambiguous fleshy object oozing and spurting various putrid substances from its orifices, was an explicit coming out of sorts, a divergence from the art he’d produced up until then: placid pastorals, exquisitely rendered portraits; the kinds of unobtrusive niceties that parents like to hang on their walls. The thing was superbly grotesque, faithful to how excruciating coming out can be, and so big that we had to strap it to the roof of his car to take it with us. (At some point, he’d invited me back home with him after the program to meet his family and their dogs.) When we got to Maine, his mom and dad seemed perplexed about what to do with it.
In retrospect, I think that our experience with the Yale community had a ripple effect on Stephen’s evolution as an artist. For years, it seemed that any good commentary on being homosexual had to simultaneously communicate its treachery. After he moved to New York, where we shared studio space in Dumbo, his work investigated the psychological power dynamics of male partnerships, using materials ranging from children’s puzzles to men (who took sexual pleasure in) voluntarily offering their bodies for his art. There was a darkness to the work we produced during that period, as we were both, at the time, toying with allusions to kink and BDSM as expressions of pain. For example, in one larger sculptural installation from 2018, Stephen fabricated a silicone replica of his own body in a boy scout uniform and submerged it in a large pool of water adorned with rocks and foliage. Like John Everett Millais’s painting of Ophelia, the work was virtuosic, morbid, and erotic. Stephen’s then-fiancé and I were proud of the way it explored the taboo topics that were fundamental to his own identity. However, we all sensed that the protagonist of the installation had drowned in sorrow. It rang more of autoerotic asphyxiation than of self love or acceptance.
Dogs weren’t supposed to enter the artistic narrative. Stephen’s first two dog paintings, goofy portraits of his family’s pitbull rescues, were gifts for his sister. Though they were meant to be side projects, by the time he’d painted his third, a Christmas present for his parents, he’d found them more meaningful than anything else he’d made. He said that if he could paint dogs for a living, he’d be happy.
Why dogs? Upon being tasked with writing this essay, I put the question to Stephen. He said that dogs are not bound by social conventions or crippling bouts of self-awareness. Unable to do otherwise, they express themselves freely. He’s particularly inspired by the way they show joy. It made me think of all the instances in which Stephen had been denied –– and possibly denied himself –– the freedom to imbue his art with that feeling –– as if this new venture was evidence of him standing up for himself, asserting his right to be happy. He went on to describe the way that dogs become reckless when they’re desperate, which brought to mind the way we had behaved (and still behave now and then) as young adults coming of age in New York City. The late nights, parties both fancy and trashy, experimentation with identities, friendships, drugs, alcohol, ideologies, and beliefs –– we were hungrily searching for something, unclear what it was that we craved. Maybe, when a dog squeals or acts out, it’s not so much the treat that it wants as it is to hear, “Good boy.”
Stephen reached out to one of our teaching assistants from Yale Norfolk and asked if he could do a portrait of his dog. He tried to connect with other dog owners in his network and via Instagram. Unfortunately, building a lucrative dog-painting-based career proved to be tougher than he’d anticipated — there just wasn’t enough demand. So, using clay and plaster, he began to fabricate his own dogs. One day, I watched him sculpting two of them, their facial expressions modeled after those of him and his now-husband. They were awesome, and I told him so. Everyone who saw them agreed. For the first time, he didn’t need validation because he’d found his own fire.
In Dog Show #1: The Dinner Party, Stephen’s first solo exhibition, on display at The Invisible Dog Art Center, humanoid dogs revel, sleep, and misbehave at an elegant yet excessive feast reminiscent of the notorious gatherings that his husband has been known to throw. More so than some of his other artworks, this one references Stephen’s husband, apparent in the dogs’ white button-down shirts, indigo jeans, and deep, glistening eyes. The room itself reveals his opulent yet discerning taste. The dinner table is replete with food, cut glass vases, candles, and the finery of an extravagant setting. Chandeliers hang above and oriental rugs lie below, stacked at angles as if too plentiful to be kept orderly. Each dinner guest is not so much a representation of him as an amalgamation of the ways folks might conduct themselves –– or hyperbolic versions of the ways that we have conducted ourselves –– in his presence. While a good party is about getting along and having a nice time, a great party, this party, is a needed catharsis so tremendous that only dogs could truly express it.
Some of the protagonists of Dog Show #1: The Dinner Party seem inebriated. One dog guzzles wine, one with white powder on his nostril passes along a rolled up bill, and another has mysteriously passed out. Other dogs, such as the one hanging from the chandelier and the ones draped in spaghetti, have an air of comic naïveté. Taken together, the collective frenzy of the scene is so intoxicating that the surroundings begin to reverberate with the spirit of the bacchanal. As if part of a mass hallucination, dog faces appear in the paintings hanging on the walls and, in a climactic canine transubstantiation, emerge from the food on the table. The metamorphosis theme is apt. Throughout our history together, I have witnessed each of Stephen’s transmutations as an artist. This one feels the most holy yet.
About Stephen Morrison
Stephen Morrison was born in Maine in 1991. He earned his BFA from the Laguna College of Art and attended Yale Norfolk and the New York Studio Residency Program. His work has been exhibited in numerous group shows, most recently at Eve Leibe Gallery curated by Lauren Powell, Ethan Cohen Gallery, The Museum of the Dog, and the Re:Art Show curated by Peter Clough. This is his first solo exhibition.
Website: www.stephenmorrisonstudio.com
Instagram: @dogsihavepainted
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On View
September 4–October 10, 2021
Closing Party
Saturday, October 9
7–10pm
Proof of vaccination is required to attend the party
Admission
Free
Location
51 Bergen St.
Gallery Hours
Thursday–Saturday: 1–7pm
Sunday: 1–5pm