Nate Heiges

David Kennedy Cutler
March 25, 2025

Artist David Kennedy Cutler brings us a mixtape in honor of his show Second Nature up now in New York City. He’s “moving in” to Derek Eller gallery with works that mine the everyday, everything rendered as replete replications using his extraordinary process. “Each piece originates from photographs shot at home or in the studio (or gallery, when I perform), which are then fed through digital-imaging software, converted through an inkjet transfer technique into various cut and collaged layers or skins, and held together on either a prefabricated or constructed armature—where finally painting and sculpture techniques enhance and obscure any sense of origination.”

Over the past ten+ years David has also been making copies of himself, creating a new döppelganger each time he does a performance. The penultimate iteration of this process saw 5 Davids Kennedy Cutler all signing books at the launch of a monograph about another performance with his doubles, “Off Season.” For that performance Cutler spent 10 weeks living in the *closed* Halsey McKay Gallery in East Hampton, NY. With only his clones and a webcam for company, he built structures, made paintings and sculptures, and created an alternative reality where he was creating a new society at the end of the world.

This obsession with repetition and reproduction has also found its way into a practice that involves making publications and editions. He’s collaborated often with other artists like Sara Greenberger Rafferty and Ethan Greenbaum, (the three of them as &&& were previous guests on The Selection Committee,) who share his interest in multiplicity, imaging, mediation, and software.

David is a great storyteller, and he has a lot of stories to tell about inspired collectors, other performances, and other artists who inspire him. Join us for a fascinating conversation.

Apple Podcasts ︎
Spotify ︎

Complete playlist below; tracks in yellow were cut for time.

Mess, Scratch Acid, 1991
My New House, The Fall, 1985
Cloudy Day, Tom T Hall, 1969
Hymn, Diane Coffee,
Come On, Tommy McGee, 2016
Black Foliage (Itself), The Olivia Tremor Control, 1999
This is how we walk on the Moon, Arthur Russell, 1994
Hidden Song, Delia Gonzalez, 2017
Black Panta, Lee "Scratch" Perry, 2004
Headlights, Pets, 2023
Rainbow 65 (full version), Gene Chandler
No Side To Fall In, The Raincoats, 1979
Government Cheque, Cindy Lee
Forced To Drive, The Breeders, 2002
History Lesson - Part II, Minutemen, 2019
Virtually Nothing, 100 Flowers, 1983
The Commercial, Wire, 1977
I'm On the Side of Mankind as Much as the Next Man, McCarthy, 1990
I'm Sad About It, Lee Moses, 2007
Windsor Hum, Protomartyr, 2017
When It's Over, The Soft Moon, 2010
Dimed, Stuck, 2020
I Go To Sleep, Anika, 2010
Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste, Galaxie 500, 1988

David Kennedy Cutler (b. 1979, Sandgate, VT; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) received his BFA from The Rhode Island School of Design in 2001. He was recently featured in an Artist Project in Artforum (January 2024) and received a NYFA grant for interdisciplinary work (July 2024). He has had solo exhibitions at Halsey McKay Gallery (East Hampton, NY), Essex Flowers (NYC), The Centre for Contemporary Art (Tallinn, Estonia) and Nice & Fit (Berlin, Germany). Cutler has performed in various spaces in New York including Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, Essex Flowers, Printed Matter, Halsey McKay, and Flag Art Foundation, and internationally at the Center for Contemporary Arts Estonia, among others. He has been included in group exhibitions internationally. His works are part of the the permanent collections of the Wellin Museum at Hamilton College and The RISD Museum, and his artist’s books are included in the libraries of the Whitney Museum, The Yale Arts Library, and the Brooklyn Museum.