Wendell Dayton at LA Artcore
On view from May 3-31st at LA Artcore's Brewery Annex.
Wendell Dayton was born in 1938 in Spokane, Washington. After graduating from Indiana University with a degree in fine art, he hitchhiked to New York City, found a loft and began to paint. He worked as guard at the Whitney Museum and on the maintenance crew of the Museum of Modern Art.
In 1962 he switched to sculpture using materials from the streets and demolition sites and beginning to weld together larger pieces. He eventually settled on stainless steel, his primary medium for over 50 years.
Dayton’s contemporaries include some of the most important abstract expressionists of the 20th century.
As James Rosenquist described: I met Wendell Dayton in 1965. He invited me to his studio on the bowery. It was cold and he had a wood fire in a pot-bellied stove. I was surprised to see it crammed full of collected steel off the street, seemingly all welded together. The sculpture was a surprising entanglement of forms all the way up to the ceiling and jamming the complete floor of a 30x80 foot loft. Wendell Dayton is an unusual sculptor with vision and ambition. I recommend his work.
Iconic art publisher Harry Abrams later said: Wendell Dayton is one of those unusual sculptors who not only has a great technical facility but also possesses that rare gift of creativity in harmony with our contemporary environment.
Dayton lives and works at a sprawling two-acre studio on the outskirts of Los Angeles, California.
Dayton’s minimal constructions, primarily created by welding steel materials, make use of the environment and the objects in it to produce unspoken poetic narratives. His show at LA Artcore will be on view from May 3 - May 31, 2015
