Dash Snow
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Dash Snow (born 1981, New York; died July 13, 2009. New York) was an American artist based in New York City best known for his sculptural installations, collages, and photographs. Snow's photographic work is in a thematically similar mode to photographers Nan Goldin and Larry Clark, often depicting scenes of a candid or illicit nature.
Life and work
Snow exhibited in galleries and museums such as The Royal Academy in London, the Whitney Museum of American Art's 2006 Biennial "Day For Night", Deitch Projects, Saatchi Gallery and Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery in New York.
Snow was the great-grandson of Dominique de Menil, and his mother, Taya Snow, is the daughter of Robert Thurman (and the half-sister of actress Uma Thurman) and Christophe de Menill. Snow ran away from home and began living on the streets at 13 or 14, and began taking photographs, he said, as a record of places he might not remember the next day.
Snow was included in the 2006 Wall Street Journal article titled "The 23-Year Old Masters", which selected ten top emerging US artists including Rosson Crow, Ryan Trecartin, Zane Lewis, and Keegan McHargue.
Snow's photographic work is in a thematically similar mode to photographers Nan Goldin, Larry Clark, Ryan McGinley and Richard Billingham, often depicting scenes of a candid or illicit nature. Instances of sex, drug taking, violence and art-world pretentiousness are documented with disarming frankness and honesty, offering insight into the decadent lifestyle increasingly associated with young New York City artists and their social circles.
Some of Snow's recent collage-based work was characterized by the controversial practice of using his own semen as a material applied to or splashed across newspaper photographs of police officers and other authority figures. However, the suggestive nature of such works did not prevent them from being acquired by influential collectors such as Charles Saatchi.
Death
Snow died of a drug overdose on the evening of July 13, 2009 at Lafayette House, a hotel in lower Manhattan.
