Darryl J Lauster

BFA, 1995, San Diego State University, CA; MFA, 1998, University of Houston, TX. Exhibitions: Cameron Museum of Art, Appalachian State University, NC; The Urban Center for Contemporary Art, MI; The John Michael Kohler Foundation, WI; The Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX. Bibliography: Huffington Post; Art Lies; American Craft; Gulf Coast; Houston Press; The Dallas Observer. Collections: Philadelphia Museum of Art; Cameron Art Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; University of Central Arkansas, McNeese State University. Awards: Cultural Grant, Netherland-America Foundation, NY; Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, NY; Visual Artist Grant, Peter Reed Foundation, NY.

Darryl Lauster's work investigates and appropriates American history and popular culture, with a deep interest in the role of memory—its fallibility and malleability—particularly in the way the historic record is often defined by it. Lauster's methodology hinges on the increasing (however reluctant) acceptance that our understanding of history is largely subjective. As such, his approach to the past, as well as to the present, ranges from reverence to agitation, depending on the subject matter he chooses to dissect, and perhaps more importantly, to what end it was dissected before. In the Socratic sense, Lauster interrogates what ancient Greeks called "nomos," or customs, so that values become reinforced through the process of self, or collective, critique.