I-20 is pleased to open the first New York show for Deco Dawson. This will include a viewing of Dawson’s 16mm film on DVD, The Arm Wrestling Bear Movie, 2001. The silent film – portraying the rise and fall of a blindly ambitious, ill-tempered arm wrestling bear – is one of five “classics” by the artist, all stylized silent shorts. Dawson has left clues to the film’s origin in the actors’ modern dress, and the bear’s contemporary mannerisms.
Deco Dawson was born in 1977 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where he lives and works. His most recent short film, FILM (dzama), based on a surreal fictional biography of the artist Marcel Dzama, was awarded first prize at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival. Dawson is currently co-directing his first feature film, Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary.