Conceptual Art

A sampling of work


Edward Dormer, a conceptual artist, graciously received an extensive array of awards and opportunities for work exhibited in the United States and Europe. The Pew Charitable Trusts generously funded a fellowship residency and cultural ambassadorship at Château de La Napoule in southern France.


Edward received the rare honorary Knighthood of Gniew Castle.


In northern Poland, Gniew Castle granted a public art project and hosted the NOTORO International Art Symposium and Artist Residency. While there Edward received the rare honorary Knighthood of Gniew Castle. The Contemporary Art Museum in Sopot, Poland hosted a residency and arranged a nation-wide cultural tour on his behalf. In Germany, many generous high-profile opportunities allotted a productive year of making works in Berlin and Potsdam and the surrounding region.


Blowback contains conceptual underpinnings of Middle East archeology methods of sorting early civilization artifacts and the metaphorical bathing of ‘oil-soaked’ histories of international influence on the region.


His installations and exhibitions have varied in size, place and historical significance. United States sites range from nature preserves to the uncontrollable anthracite mine-fire in renowned Centralia, Pennsylvania, to the Delaware River flowing past Philadelphia’s abandoned industrial piers. In Europe, varied sites prominently include a tomb-tower and neighboring cliff on the French Riviera, to a maple tree grove in the Dordogne Valley. In Poland, a national Teutonic landmark is known as Gniew Castle. And in Germany on a dilapidated military base in Potsdam and contrasting nature preserve in the local countryside.


Minefield, excavated from the Pennsylvania anthracite belt region is metaphorically analogous to that of minefields that transform material and ideological landscapes of contemporary culture. During the early 1800s in Philadelphia, Anthracite fueled the start of the American industrial revolution. Fittingly, a historic warehouse basement in Old City Philadelphia showcased this site-specific exhibit, in the city neighborhood where American Democracy was forged.


Unseen historic layers of each place are paramount to their cultural development. Land use, ecological concerns, philosophical underpinnings and ephemeral effects of modern time define each project.


Molecular Notation floats on the Delaware River, connecting to the surrounding brown-fields polluted by PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls). Today the land is occupied by a casino and luxury high-rise condominiums negating the perpetual damage done by Philadelphia’s industrial past.


A signature optical phenomenon unique to each installation intentionally engages the viewer over time, setting a contemplative tone. Stoicism and isolation, compassion and reflection, extract meaning and gains understanding ostensibly from nothing. Iconic reverence has no place in this work.


Fruits of European industrialism marks its time.

In a complete reversal, One Day Four Hours was the time an East German Officers Casio burned to the ground. The site-specific exhibit lasted that long. German mined bituminous coal hovers in a pendulum over an ashen Black Hole.




Cut Here: Instruction Command Option speculates on the artifice of suburban and urban expansion as one moves through this tentatively protected forested area.



Landing East-West Cycle is about an invasive plant and its suppression, connected intrinsically within an intentionally sanitized and romantically sublime landscape.



Segue I and Segue II are site-specific primitive surveyor instruments and a solemn reminder of old-growth forest that once stretched across the Vistula River valley in Northern Poland, and Europe at large.