Nancy Dwyer

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Nancy Dwyer (born 1954) is an American contemporary artist who makes paintings, works on paper, public art, sculpture, and furniture-inspired pieces. Her work has been shown at major museums including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, and the New Museum in New York. She is a key figure in The Pictures Generation, a group of artists who challenged mass media imagery in the 1970s and 1980s.

Dwyer helped start Hallwalls, an artist-run space in Buffalo, in 1974 with Cindy Sherman and Robert Longo. Her early work Cardz (1980) features 26 line drawings from magazine clippings, printed on laminated leatherette cards to turn everyday pictures into a universal, expressive set. In the mid-1980s she began making “word sculptures,” using bold text as sculpture to comment on society. Notable pieces include BIG EGO II (2010), a giant inflatable sculpture spelling “ego” in bright yellow, and KILLER (1991), a lacquered aluminum table that reads the title when viewed from above.

Dwyer is also known for being the subject in Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #7 (1978)—the only image in the series that isn’t Sherman herself. A Dwyer line drawing was used for the cover of Hall & Oates’ Rock ’n Soul Part 1 (1983).

Her exhibitions span decades. Her first solo show was at Hallwalls in 1977, followed by Hallwalls’ 1980 Five Years exhibition. She has been shown at the New Museum, White Columns, The Drawing Center, Artists Space, the Brooklyn Museum, the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Sao Paulo Biennial, and the Whitney Biennial, among others. In 2013 the Fisher Landau Center for Art in Long Island City organized a major retrospective, Painting & Sculpture, 1982–2012. Critics praised works such as Desk of Envy, with The New York Times’ Ken Johnson calling it a standout example of 1980s art. She has also been featured in Artforum with coverage of the Fisher Landau show. Dwyer teaches sculpture at the University of Vermont in Burlington.