Pictured: "" by Kevin Dean. Photo courtesy of: Alfstad& Contemporary

With nearly a year gone since his passing, Alfstad& Contemporary celebrates the life and art of Kevin Dean, longtime Ringling professor and director of the Selby Gallery, with a retrospective exhibit recreating some of Dean’s most singular installations and revealing never-before-seen prints and paintings unearthed from the artist’s past. Entitled “Extra Ordinary,” the exhibit, curated by Dean’s friends and Selby Gallery compatriots Laura Avery and Tim Jaeger, opens today with a reception at 5:30pm.

In addition to celebrating his later work, guests will have the chance to see examples of Dean’s earlier Sarasota art, including a series of prints made in the ‘90s during one productive summer with Ringling instructor Patrick Lindhardt, and an unnamed mid-size painting recently found in the back of Dean’s storage unit. Most likely the earliest of Dean’s work presented in this retrospective, viewers will recognize elements that Dean would continue to explore, as well as those things he left behind.

“In this series of prints, we feel the cast of the artist—a demonstration of Dean’s internal process, ability and desire to draw,” said Jaeger, who worked and studied under Dean at the Selby Gallery. “All said, I consider this exhibition to be another of Kevin’s tests for Laura Avery and me. I feel him smirking at us in an ‘I gotcha’ kind of way. He loved to test everyone now and then.”

Guests will also revisit Dean’s Whitcomb Series in part, which saw the artist adopting an alter ego to create a collection of installations and portraits rife with Dean’s trademark deft use of symbolism, bringing together disparate influences for a presentation simultaneously grounded and other-worldly. Dominating the main floor of Alfstad&, “Dreaming About My Cabin in the City of Dis” could be Whitcomb’s grandest construction, weaving Christian iconography, Dante’s Inferno, modern science and Americana kitsch into a kind of long-forgotten refuge of the intellectual rustic.

Serious but not solemn, Dean’s work retains an inherent playfulness as the artist explores themes such as mortality, religion, family and self-perception, but always with a wink and a nod. Irreverent and dry, the assembled work rings with neither self-importance nor insistence, just a quiet presentation of, well, the extraordinary.

“I just enjoy seeing all this stuff up again. You never know how many more times you’ll get to see it all,” said Dean's son Ian, who helped recreate the late artist's massive installation for the show. “His presence is still being felt and celebrated, and he’ll be remembered for a long time.”

“Extra Ordinary” opens today at Alfstad& Contemporary with a reception at 5:30pm and runs until June 5.

Pictured: "" by Kevin Dean. Photo courtesy of: Alfstad& Contemporary