Dealer
September 30 - November 2, 2022
The Anderson, Richmond, VA
Link to Exhibition Website
Press Release
VCUarts and the Anderson are pleased to present Dealer, an exhibition of new and recent works by Hunter Foster. In Dealer, Foster poses questions about chance, meaning, authority, nationhood, and faith. Foster’s strange, circular paintings are formed by winding strips of material around a wooden core, until the accumulation of edges—concentric layers of canvas, paper, or a deconstructed American flag—constitutes an image-bearing surface. The paintings are mounted to grid-like structures of PVC pipe affixed to the gallery wall by repurposed flag brackets. In this arrangement, the paintings become coiled data sets within a codec, planets or atoms fixed in orbit, or—as the recurring title court suggests—agents and actors within ritualized structures of competitive play, romance, or civic justice.
Like Jasper Johns and Lucio Fontana, Foster’s insistence on the materiality of painting—as surface, structure, and process—is more than pagan formalism or material exhibitionism. It is a way of preparing painting to do the heavy, existential work that Foster asks it to do. He “thickens” painting, building up a durable surface like a callus or scar, storing up time and memory with each wrap, like a battery: 10 years, 20 years, 30 years—megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte. Scroll-like in their construction, Foster’s turn of the painting is a radical renewal of its symbolic potency. In that turn, the canvas becomes a cross-section in which time and distance are recorded but collapsed, made simultaneous and scrutable. All data points are brought into parity. The scroll becomes codex: a searchable database, a map, a prayer.
Untitled, 2022
Dyed canvas, oil on wood
Untitled, 2021-22
Cyanotype on dyed canvas, oil on wood
One of Spades, 2022
Dyed and bleached canvas, oil on wood
One of Spades, 2022Dyed and bleached canvas, oil on wood
Dealer, installation view 
Department of the Interior, 2022
Ironing board, beeswax, graphite, leather polish on 25’x15’ American flag purchased from a used car dealership, steel coupling
Department of the Interior, 2022
Ironing board, beeswax, graphite, leather polish on 25’x15’ American flag purchased from a used car dealership, steel coupling
Department of the Interior, 2022
Ironing board, beeswax, graphite, leather polish on 25’x15’ American flag purchased from a used car dealership, steel coupling
Clot, 2022
Dyed canvas, oil on wood
Dealer, installation view
Court 11, 2022
Graphite and leather polish on PVC pipe and fittings, adjustable steel flagpole bracket
Court 13, 2022
Twine, PVC pipe and fittings, adjustable steel flagpole brackets
Court 13, 2022
Twine, PVC pipe and fittings, adjustable steel flagpole brackets
Two of Hearts, 2022
Dyed and bleached canvas, oil on wood
Wheel, 2022
Dyed canvas, oil on wood