ST. LOUIS, MO.- Laumeier Sculpture Park announced today the acquisition and upcoming installation of a new sculpture by artist Tony Tasset, whose Eye, 2007, is already one of the most iconic sculptures in the Park. Tasset’s Deer, 2015, is a larger-than-life, 12-foot-tall sculpture of a white-tailed doe made of painted, steel-reinforced fiberglass. The major acquisition honors and celebrates the nonprofit organization’s 40th Anniversary year. The sculpture will be accessioned into Laumeier’s Permanent Collection and installed in the Way Field in August 2017.

Tony Tasset is arguably one of the most inventive sculptors working in the United States today. Since the mid-1990s, he has created increasingly ambitious sculptures; his cunning work explores how we collectively dwell in the landscape. Deer celebrates the unique environment created when art frames nature. The artwork’s size suggests how nature is out of balance in today’s urban and suburban spaces, and how humans impact the species around us. The surreal juxtaposition of the super-sized deer emerging from the woods dramatizes the relationship of what it means to be human, the identity of sculpture and their respective places in nature.

“As one of the first and largest dedicated sculpture parks in the country, Laumeier Sculpture Park has set many of the standards for public practice that combine curated public art with the interpretation and stewardship of a traditional indoor museum,” said Dana Turkovic, Associate Curator at Laumeier Sculpture Park. “Tasset’s Deer has the potential to become a new icon of the cultural landscape of the Park, serving as both a welcoming hostess and photo opportunity for Laumeier’s 300,000 annual visitors.”

Tony Tasset was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1960. He received his B.F.A. at the Art Academy of Cincinnati in 1983 and his M.F.A. at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1985. Tasset works with video, photography, bronze, wax, fiberglass, film and even taxidermy. His work employs wisdom and wit and continuously contends with the trappings of Modernism, Postmodern theory, pop culture and the universal human emotions associated with love, loss, frailty and beauty. Tasset's work is in the permanent collections of prestigious museums including the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the Museum Fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, among others.