Curated by William Strobeck.
Featuring work by: Larry Clark, Mark Gonzales, William Strobeck, Dash Snow, Ryan McGinley, EARSNOT IRAK, Ari Marcopoulos, Julien Stranger, Dave Schubert, Tobin Yelland, Jonathan Cannon, and Spike Jonze.
During the 1990s, a teen-aged William Strobeck spent a good part of his time on the Everson Museum’s Community Plaza. Here, the young filmmaker and photographer discovered a skateboarding crew of “weirdos and outcasts” who introduced him to a global diaspora of creative individuals sharing a similar DIY ethos and punk rock spirit. In that pre-digital age, Strobeck and his friends pored over coveted VHS skate tapes and magazines, recognizing themselves in images from like-minded communities all over the world. Skateboarding offered them a sense of identity and belonging unlike anything else at the time.
Fast forward thirty years and Strobeck is now one of the key chroniclers of skate culture in the 21st century. After first capturing Syracuse’s skate scene in the 1990s, he now travels internationally to make videos and images that transcend skating’s mere physical gymnastics. His work stands out for its beauty, emotional nuance, and psychological introspection.
For DEAD END., Strobeck was invited to curate an exhibition that spoke to the Everson’s history as a hospitable venue for skateboarding, which the museum has always considered a creative enterprise. Strobeck’s exhibition, while including a few of his own works, focuses on the artists and events that indelibly shaped him as a burgeoning artist. Strobeck’s vision is fundamentally about youth and its uncertainties, boundaries, possibilities, and essential limitlessness. In unguarded and casual images, these subjects point to skate culture’s influence on the popular culture of today—handheld skate videos are today’s TikTok and Instagram reels, while the microcultures of Substack, Reddit, and Tumblr echo the DIY skatezines of the past.
DEAD END. is intentionally participatory and egalitarian. The free-for-all nature of skateboarding goes hand in hand with a worldview that repurposes the built environment for its own use. Part of the Museum’s collection, a new sculpture by artist and professional skateboarder Mark Gonzales now awaits the skaters who still gather on the Everson Community Plaza today.
Made possible, in part, by:
The Everson is supported by the Dorothy and Marshall M. Reisman Foundation; the General Operating Support program, a regrant program of the County of Onondaga with the support of County Executive, J. Ryan McMahon II, and the Onondaga County Legislature, administered by CNY Arts; and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
