Bear Hunt
Artist Statement
The bears came to hunt. They fed. And now they are going home.
On a journey from one world to another, we are offered a last glimpse at these awe-inspiring animals. What we can see: four massive, acid-orange bears in various stages of appearance.
One bear’s behind is barely there; the body is more than ¾’s eaten by the concrete garden wall. The second is halfway gone. Only two mammoth back paws are visible as the bear propels forward. The third is almost all there. The bulk of the body persists, save for the head, which seems to melt into the future. One fully intact bear rounds out the pack, also plodding onward with the same dignified resignation.
The presence of these four monumental figures transforms the garden into a supernatural arena or a translation space between reality and myth. As the bears walk into the wall, it is as if they exist simultaneously in two realms – one we know as our own and the other, a place we can only dream about.
Bear Hunt offers a rare opportunity to share space with the majesty of these colossal animals known as Kodiak bears. Walk among them. There is magnanimity in their awesome physicality. Imagine their breath as easily as you can their fierce capacity for violence. Touch fur, put a foot next to paw, go nose to nose – they are real in every way.
Except for the paint colour. Fluorescent orange paint coats the bears for the same reason big game hunters use it in the wild – so they don’t shoot each other. More seriously though, the vibrancy cautions and calls to attention. It also serves to visually disturb common understandings of what is natural or what is real, and as a result, highlights growing divisions between socio-cultural understandings of the natural word and the physicality of the natural world itself.
The Kodiak bear (Ursus arctos middendorffi) is the largest subspecies of Brown Bear. Kodiaks are considered to be unique because they are exclusive to the islands of the Kodiak Archipelago in south-central Alaska. 12,000 years ago, as the climate warmed at the end of the last ice age, sea levels rose high enough to isolate the Kodiak bear population from mainland Alaska. As such, there has been very little genetic diversity within the population. Along with other biologically diverse flora and fauna that have flourished on the archipelago, Kodiak bears have benefited from isolation and protection. Most bears live in the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge and as a result, their population is actually increasing.
Because the species has been relatively undisturbed compared to other bear populations, they have an almost prehistoric quality about them. They are largest of bear species and are often touted as the world's largest land carnivores, even though Kodiaks prefer to eat grass, plants and berries rather than meat. Regardless, these bears exist in a position of supreme power, as Kodiaks have no known natural predators.
Drever’s previous work has explored power in various forms, most explicitly power as it is expressed through violence. Instructional Bat Series #1 are laser-engraved wooden baseball bats with sayings like Knowledge and Responsibility. Instructional Bat Series #2, which are high-polish, regulation-size aluminum bats say things like The only thing you have ever been able to understand and I think I can help you see things my way etc.
The pieces are reflective and shiny allowing for viewer identification and a play of desire, repression, and corruption. Similarly, the Ten Commandment Wrench Set juxtaposes another weapon commonly used in street fighting with text evoking mainstream behavioral codes - the Ten Commandments. Both the bats and the wrenches highlight the rules of conduct for a gang, sub-culture, or religion, while reinforcing the ambiguity of the oppressor and the oppressed.
Other sculptures, such as the Seven Deadly Roundel, examine the power of the government and military. If It Ain’t White, It Ain’t Right looks at the Klu Klux Klan and white supremacy. Whether it is repressed anger in individuals or social groups who espouse beliefs that threaten or endanger the freedom of others, Drever has long since been interested in the constitution of power and what makes something or someone powerful.
Influenced by Haida traditional carving tools and techniques, Drever’s contemporary art practice is strongly rooted in an abstract minimalist tradition. This is especially apparent in Drever’s keen regard for the details and the seamless level of finish in his work. Drever works with Ferrari to paint his artwork and precision machine shops to build objects to exact specification. His sculptures are seductively sparse and calm, but more often than not, highly charged with politically loaded content.
The Automatic Handgun series makes it possible to experience how it feels to hold a deadly weapon. And before you know it the imagination is running wild. Would you use it in a panic for self-defense? Or to commit a violent act, perhaps for revenge or jilted love? Through the seduction of violence, Drever enables these sensory experiences and engages the complex relationship between complicit desire and unbounded power. His objects re-direct the gaze back onto the viewer, making us all involved in art production.
Bear Hunt takes this consideration further by exploring the power of bears – one of the natural world’s most impressive creatures. There are many notions of bears in the popular imagination: “the big bad bear”, the teddy bear, circus dancing bears, trained bears, and also the bear portrayed as an inherently dangerous and brutal animal. Perhaps, there is nothing as scary as coming upon a bear in the wild. Usually, just the thought of it is terrifying enough.
The fear is based on the fact that, as the other, bears exhibit an unchallenged potential for violence. They embody forces of desire and repression present in contemporary intersections of language, myth, culture, and nature. At the same time, Kodiak bears, in particular, are shy and any kind of human interaction can cause them considerable stress. In fact, these bears are not a threat to humans at all. In the past 75 years, only one person has been killed by a bear on Kodiak Island. Bears do not defend territories as such, but they do have home ranges they like to come back to each year.
Because the majority of the Kodiak bears live in a wildlife refuge, population management has been fairly straightforward. Subsistence hunting occurs under federal management on federal lands within the boundaries of the Kodiak Refuge. There are a total of 11 permits available for all Alutiiq villages within the Kodiak Archipelago. Each village must select a hunter for their respective number of permits.
Concurrently, sport hunting is also tightly regulated. Each year, the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge issues 496 bear permits, for which approximately 5000 hunters apply. Between160-180 Kodiak bears are killed per year. Hunters visiting from outside Alaska are required to hire a professional guide for a cost of $10,000-$12,000.00. Not surprisingly, Kodiak bear viewing is a major part of the economy on Kodiak Island.
Many cultures hold the bear as a symbol of purity, strength, dominance and authority. Haida culture believes the bear is a supreme being, embodying both extraordinary physical and supernatural powers. Stories tell of the similarity between bears and humans and the mystical nature of bears because of their proximity to the spirit world.
The bear is one of Dean Drever’s totems animals. He considers the bear to be one of his spirit guides. His great-grandmother, Margaret Bear, traveled from Haida Gwaii in the early 1900’s and entered a Saskatchewan residential school. So, the bear has other more personal significances for Drever as well.
Bear Hunt is at once benevolent and strong, but also distant and tragic. As they move through the garden wall to subsequently disappear from view, we are reminded of transition, migration, change and loss. But what hope happens on the other side? How can standing alongside these animals show nature’s strength and seriousness – or our own vulnerabilities?
Kodiak bears enter their dens in late October. Pregnant sows are usually the first to go and then, the males follow. Are these bears off to hibernate, or are they on another kind of journey entirely? Is this what North America might have looked like pre-contact? Were all the animals on this earth so large and stately before humankind thought the better of it?
The bears came to hunt. They fed. And now they are going home.
On a journey from one world to another, we are offered a last glimpse at these awe-inspiring animals. What we can see: four massive, acid-orange bears in various stages of appearance.
One bear’s behind is barely there; the body is more than ¾’s eaten by the concrete garden wall. The second is halfway gone. Only two mammoth back paws are visible as the bear propels forward. The third is almost all there. The bulk of the body persists, save for the head, which seems to melt into the future. One fully intact bear rounds out the pack, also plodding onward with the same dignified resignation.
The presence of these four monumental figures transforms the garden into a supernatural arena or a translation space between reality and myth. As the bears walk into the wall, it is as if they exist simultaneously in two realms – one we know as our own and the other, a place we can only dream about.
Bear Hunt offers a rare opportunity to share space with the majesty of these colossal animals known as Kodiak bears. Walk among them. There is magnanimity in their awesome physicality. Imagine their breath as easily as you can their fierce capacity for violence. Touch fur, put a foot next to paw, go nose to nose – they are real in every way.
Except for the paint colour. Fluorescent orange paint coats the bears for the same reason big game hunters use it in the wild – so they don’t shoot each other. More seriously though, the vibrancy cautions and calls to attention. It also serves to visually disturb common understandings of what is natural or what is real, and as a result, highlights growing divisions between socio-cultural understandings of the natural word and the physicality of the natural world itself.
The Kodiak bear (Ursus arctos middendorffi) is the largest subspecies of Brown Bear. Kodiaks are considered to be unique because they are exclusive to the islands of the Kodiak Archipelago in south-central Alaska. 12,000 years ago, as the climate warmed at the end of the last ice age, sea levels rose high enough to isolate the Kodiak bear population from mainland Alaska. As such, there has been very little genetic diversity within the population. Along with other biologically diverse flora and fauna that have flourished on the archipelago, Kodiak bears have benefited from isolation and protection. Most bears live in the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge and as a result, their population is actually increasing.
Because the species has been relatively undisturbed compared to other bear populations, they have an almost prehistoric quality about them. They are largest of bear species and are often touted as the world's largest land carnivores, even though Kodiaks prefer to eat grass, plants and berries rather than meat. Regardless, these bears exist in a position of supreme power, as Kodiaks have no known natural predators.
Drever’s previous work has explored power in various forms, most explicitly power as it is expressed through violence. Instructional Bat Series #1 are laser-engraved wooden baseball bats with sayings like Knowledge and Responsibility. Instructional Bat Series #2, which are high-polish, regulation-size aluminum bats say things like The only thing you have ever been able to understand and I think I can help you see things my way etc.
The pieces are reflective and shiny allowing for viewer identification and a play of desire, repression, and corruption. Similarly, the Ten Commandment Wrench Set juxtaposes another weapon commonly used in street fighting with text evoking mainstream behavioral codes - the Ten Commandments. Both the bats and the wrenches highlight the rules of conduct for a gang, sub-culture, or religion, while reinforcing the ambiguity of the oppressor and the oppressed.
Other sculptures, such as the Seven Deadly Roundel, examine the power of the government and military. If It Ain’t White, It Ain’t Right looks at the Klu Klux Klan and white supremacy. Whether it is repressed anger in individuals or social groups who espouse beliefs that threaten or endanger the freedom of others, Drever has long since been interested in the constitution of power and what makes something or someone powerful.
Influenced by Haida traditional carving tools and techniques, Drever’s contemporary art practice is strongly rooted in an abstract minimalist tradition. This is especially apparent in Drever’s keen regard for the details and the seamless level of finish in his work. Drever works with Ferrari to paint his artwork and precision machine shops to build objects to exact specification. His sculptures are seductively sparse and calm, but more often than not, highly charged with politically loaded content.
The Automatic Handgun series makes it possible to experience how it feels to hold a deadly weapon. And before you know it the imagination is running wild. Would you use it in a panic for self-defense? Or to commit a violent act, perhaps for revenge or jilted love? Through the seduction of violence, Drever enables these sensory experiences and engages the complex relationship between complicit desire and unbounded power. His objects re-direct the gaze back onto the viewer, making us all involved in art production.
Bear Hunt takes this consideration further by exploring the power of bears – one of the natural world’s most impressive creatures. There are many notions of bears in the popular imagination: “the big bad bear”, the teddy bear, circus dancing bears, trained bears, and also the bear portrayed as an inherently dangerous and brutal animal. Perhaps, there is nothing as scary as coming upon a bear in the wild. Usually, just the thought of it is terrifying enough.
The fear is based on the fact that, as the other, bears exhibit an unchallenged potential for violence. They embody forces of desire and repression present in contemporary intersections of language, myth, culture, and nature. At the same time, Kodiak bears, in particular, are shy and any kind of human interaction can cause them considerable stress. In fact, these bears are not a threat to humans at all. In the past 75 years, only one person has been killed by a bear on Kodiak Island. Bears do not defend territories as such, but they do have home ranges they like to come back to each year.
Because the majority of the Kodiak bears live in a wildlife refuge, population management has been fairly straightforward. Subsistence hunting occurs under federal management on federal lands within the boundaries of the Kodiak Refuge. There are a total of 11 permits available for all Alutiiq villages within the Kodiak Archipelago. Each village must select a hunter for their respective number of permits.
Concurrently, sport hunting is also tightly regulated. Each year, the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge issues 496 bear permits, for which approximately 5000 hunters apply. Between160-180 Kodiak bears are killed per year. Hunters visiting from outside Alaska are required to hire a professional guide for a cost of $10,000-$12,000.00. Not surprisingly, Kodiak bear viewing is a major part of the economy on Kodiak Island.
Many cultures hold the bear as a symbol of purity, strength, dominance and authority. Haida culture believes the bear is a supreme being, embodying both extraordinary physical and supernatural powers. Stories tell of the similarity between bears and humans and the mystical nature of bears because of their proximity to the spirit world.
The bear is one of Dean Drever’s totems animals. He considers the bear to be one of his spirit guides. His great-grandmother, Margaret Bear, traveled from Haida Gwaii in the early 1900’s and entered a Saskatchewan residential school. So, the bear has other more personal significances for Drever as well.
Bear Hunt is at once benevolent and strong, but also distant and tragic. As they move through the garden wall to subsequently disappear from view, we are reminded of transition, migration, change and loss. But what hope happens on the other side? How can standing alongside these animals show nature’s strength and seriousness – or our own vulnerabilities?
Kodiak bears enter their dens in late October. Pregnant sows are usually the first to go and then, the males follow. Are these bears off to hibernate, or are they on another kind of journey entirely? Is this what North America might have looked like pre-contact? Were all the animals on this earth so large and stately before humankind thought the better of it?