MFA Alum Carlson exhibits at Fried Fruit Art Space

Sal/Man is a continuation of Carlson’s Skinless Finless Headless Boneless Gutless Spineless body of work that explored his personal experience within the larger umbrella of domestication. The body explored the eerily similar shared experience of domestication tactics between the Atlantic salmon and the American worker. These shared experiences suggest the American worker is being slowly domesticated by large corporations. Sal/Man, the continuation of this work is a dive into the idea that domestication is not a binary between wild and tame, but rather a spectrum of genetic changes that may be violent and grotesque. The path to a tame individual is not a direct path with hundreds if not thousands of “failed experiments” along the way. These new pieces are accompanied by an installation of parts of Skinless Finless Headless Boneless Gutless Spineless. Together, the works on paper in conjunction with the installation of sculptures, prints, and paintings act as a metaphor for the experience of the American worker using the Atlantic salmon as a communicative symbol.

   
"I am evaluating my place within the systems of my life through mixed media self-portraiture. My past work has explored my personal relationships with others, my relationship with myself, and alternate selves that span across the speculative multiverse. My present focus is on my role within the working world and more specifically around connections between domestication and labor. I investigate the role that I play as a consumer of farmed products, such as pre-packaged meat and plants, and what this type of food-as-product consumer ecosystem means for society. Because I work in a supermarket seafood department, I also evaluate my role as a distributor, someone who is complacent in the repackaging, movement, and sale of farmed products. As part of this inquiry, I provide commentary on the process in which corporations domesticate their labor force through the selection of compliant employees that will work quietly for little to no compensation. The three cycles of domestication that I exist within are: consumer/ food, raw unprocessed meat/ distributor, and worker/corporation. Exploring a wide range of mediums enables me to produce works with methods and materials suitable to each aspect of my subjects. I work within painting, drawing, printmaking, and object making, with the mediums flowing together. I am always reacting and reinterpreting previous pieces. My work has always revolved around myself and my place within society, specific autobiographical situations, or imagined scenarios involving alter-egos from other worlds. I am an ideal subject to represent an average, common blue collar American worker. I have spent my life in low paying jobs of varying skill levels struggling from the exploitation of the worker and struggling to make ends meet along the way."

Dalton Carlson is an interdisciplinary artist working in Buffalo, New York. Carlson received his Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 2024 and his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art from Colorado Mesa University in 2020. His work is about how Carlson interacts and analyzes his role within larger societal systems. The Salman body of work is his most recent, focusing on Carlson’s relationship with domestication and the many facets that that entails. The work questions the role of corporations in domesticating the modern worker and the effects on the laborer. Carlson has recently shown in group shows Buffalo with shows at El Museo Gallery and CEPA Gallery and in Colorado at Mesa County Libraries and 437CO. He exhibited his second solo show, Skinless Finless Headless Boneless Gutless Spineless, at the Western New York Book Arts Center in Buffalo, NY in March of 2024.