Myles Dunigan: Sacrifice Zones

Press Release

New prints, assemblages, installations, and an artist’s book by Myles Dunigan, the Grand Prize recipient of the 2020 Ink, Press, Repeat exhibition, will be on view at the William Paterson University Galleries in the Ben Shahn Center for the Visual Arts from January 30 – May 5, 2023. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and select Saturdays (April 1 and April 29) from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Admission is free. An opening reception for the exhibition will be held Wednesday, February 22 from 4 to 6 p.m.

Sacrifice Zones will be on view in East Gallery. Inspired by the provisional nature of scientific notation and doomsday preppers, Dunigan crafts ephemeral objects culled from a personal archive of slides, models, and field notes that act as beautiful warnings in a precarious era marked with pandemics and ecological anxieties. His ambitious new works reveal a trained printmaker approaching unconventional surfaces and textures, draping and weaving images into dimensional spaces that could shelter us. Like a surveyor returning with his observations from the field, Dunigan shares his documentation of “imagined worlds where nature and technology have left humanity behind,” using 3D scans, laser-engraved photographs, and machine-drawn images.

The artist explains, “My work dissects the relationships between imaging technologies, climatological anxieties, and our liminal experience. Playing off trends of scientific skepticism and conspiratorial thinking, I employ a crypto-documentarian methodology to build uncanny realities that are neither completely factual nor fictitious. Central to my artistic project is an examination of how we experience and document the natural world through images. I am invested in exploring new, rhysomatic connections between traditional artistic practices and new technologies, and how we might grapple with ecological shifts, natural and manmade, through visual art.”

Dunigan is an American artist and educator born in Massachusetts. He was trained as a printmaker at the Rhode Island School of Design and holds an MFA from the University of Kansas. His recent exhibitions include the International Printmaking Center of New York, the Boston Public Library, the Far Eastern Museum of Fine Art in Khabarovsk, Russia, and Modern Eden Gallery in San Francisco. Dunigan currently works at the University of Florida and Santa Fe College, and resides in Gainesville, Florida.

Sacrifice Zones is one of three exhibitions on view concurrently in the William Paterson University Galleries. Ink, Press, Repeat: National Juried Printmaking and Book Art Exhibition will be on view in the Court Gallery from January 30 - March 24, 2023. The exhibition was juried by artist and master printmaker Susan J. Goldman and showcases a variety of print media by 50 artists including etching, intaglio, lithography, monoprint, screen printing, and woodcuts.

El Cartel/The Poster: Puerto Rican Graphics will be on view in the South Gallery from  January 30 – May 5, 2023. Curated by Alejandro Anreus, WP professor of art history and Latin American and Latinx studies, this exhibition showcases printed posters created by leading Puerto Rican and Nuyorican printmakers drawn from an impressive collection formed and recently donated to the William Paterson University Galleries by artist Gloria Rodríguez Calero. 

This exhibition is made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. The William Paterson University Galleries are wheelchair-accessible. Large-print educational materials are available. For additional information, please call the William Paterson University Galleries at 973-720-2654.