Dylan Neuwirth: OMNIA

Exhibition Website

Oct 12 2018 - Mar 24 2019

The culmination of an artistic journey made by Seattle artist Dylan Neuwirth over the past decade, OMNIA will spread throughout the Museum, starting with the exterior. The exhibition consists of five interconnected bodies of work that trace a metaphorical life-cycle—and by implication the life of Neuwirth—from the cosmic to the personal, including work in video, performance, sculpture, and neon. Through a multitude of personal, private, and pop-cultural references, Neuwirth aims to mine the fragmented impacts of 21st-century existence by mapping it against an expanded, universal post-human narrative.

In the artist's own words: “I combine my earliest memories of alienation, subconscious violence, and systemic addiction with motifs from digital culture to create tableaus that point toward cycles of searching, belief, and transcendence. Knowing these nonobjective concepts are vital yet impossible to define, my hubristic attempts to resist the limits of control have nonetheless evolved into an obsessive DIY endeavor driven by an impulsive pursuit of freedom.”

OMNIA entails two external works, two internal works, and one piece in the digital realm. A subtle intervention into contemporary downtown Bellevue, MCMLXXVII/MMXI will be mounted discreetly to the exterior of the building at the first floor level, to be sought out by the curious or discovered on accident by the unwary. The second exterior work, SOURCE CODE, will occupy one the Museum’s recently re-opened balconies, a neon tower of universal symbols, facing directly out onto Bellevue Way. In the Forum, Neuwirth will premiere a commission for BAM titled SCREENS, a major new work providing a compelling neon tech-noir background to Bellevue's fall and winter streetscape.

In the Museum's second floor Boeing Gallery, BAM will re-present Neuwirth’s METANOIA exhibition, a searing combination of installation, virtual reality, and performance that presents the artist’s deeply personal struggles through a series of representational objects, some found, some crafted. Finally, BAM’s website will host NEW FOLKLORE, on online presentation of digitally altered Flash performances, again mining the artist’s personal histories of addiction and redemption.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website 

  • Various Media
  • American
  • Contemporary
  • Dylan Neuwirth

Exhibition Venues & Dates