ST. LOUIS, MO.-In October 2007, Laumeier Sculpture Park , as part of the institution’s 30th anniversary celebration, will present an important solo museum exhibition by internationally-recognized artist Tony Tasset. The exhibition will fill Laumeier’s indoor galleries and extend to our outdoor galleries with a new, commissioned, monumental outdoor sculpture. The exhibition, the first to showcase Tasset’s work in St. Louis , will include selected works from the past decade, recent work and new work. A broad range of media typical of Tasset’s practice – video, photography and a variety of approaches to sculpture will be featured.

Tasset frequently uses his environment, his family and himself as subject and inspiration. His work, employing wisdom and wit, continuously contends with the trappings of modernism, postmodern theory, pop culture, and the universal human emotions associated with love, loss, frailty and beauty. In recent work he has turned to the dual nature of his own existence – an urban artist/public figure as well as a suburban-father-with-garden. Using this deeply personal source material, he creates objects and images that are at once ironic, earnest, and decidedly humanistic. Tasset describes his work as an exploration of the “conflicts of the ego and the difficulty in expressing certain sentiments in a postmodern environment where truth is relative, and in a culture of consumption where emotion is a commodity.”

Tasset received his BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati and his MFA from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago (1985). He is currently a professor of art and design at the University of Illinois , Chicago . Tasset has exhibited his work at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Yale University Art Gallery , New Haven ; and Camerawork, London , among others. He has lived and worked in Chicago for over fifteen years.

Tony Tasset’s exhibition will open Saturday, October 6, 2007 and continue through January 13, 2008. The outdoor commission will be at Laumeier for a minimum of one year. An exhibition catalog will be published as well.

Laumeier Sculpture Park is located at 12580 Rott Road in Sunset Hills, near Interstate 44 and Lindbergh Boulevard . The park is open daily from 8 a.m. until � hour past sunset. The museum is open Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m., and Saturdays and Sundays from 12 p.m. until 5 p.m. For more information, call 314-821-1209 or visit us at www.laumeier.org.