Bear Hunt
Dean Drever
October 28, 2009 – April 1, 2010
Dean Driver, Bear Hunt
Artist Statement
Acid-orange bears move in communion, towards and through a wall, and disappear.
Their movement through space signifies transition, migration, change and loss. But what hope happens on the other side? How can standing alongside these animals show nature's strength and seriousness -- or our own vulnerabilities? The bears are at once benevolent and strong, but also distant and tragic.
Bears have no known predators; therefore they exist in a position of supreme power. Many cultures hold the bear as a symbol of purity, strength, dominance and authority. I am a member of the Haida nation. Haida culture believes that the bear is a supreme being, embodying both extraordinary physical and supernatural powers. The bear is protective and permanent; patient and full of fortitude. Bears show innocence along with a prodigious sense of responsibility. They eat with an unappeasable appetite and love to play.
By situating the bears diagonally through the space, the natural environment transforms into a kind of supernatural arena or a translation space between reality and myth. The wall is the membrane between two realms. Unnaturally bright colour accentuates a growing division between socio-cultural understandings of the natural world and the physicality of the natural world itself; the vibrancy cautions and calls to attention.
Bears exhibit an unchallenged potential for violence, giving form to forces of desire and repression present in contemporary intersections of language, myth, culture, and nature. The seduction of violence engages the complex relationship between complicit desire and unbounded power.
