underseers

a solo exhibition by Jason Lazarus

5/29/2026 – 8/16/2026
Dunedin Fine Art Center, Dunedin, FL

“the antonyms of overseers disappoint…”

underseers debuts new work from artist Jason Lazarus. Featuring new sculpture, concrete photography, sound, and object-archives, this solo exhibition presents newly practiced modes of seeing for the artist. By withholding representational images, Lazarus searches for methods of rewiring vision more intimately.

As part of the exhibition’s summer programming, Lazarus will debut a public reading of their new essay Listening for Monuments, a meditation on their growing used doorstop collection.

Part of the artist’s current practice is looking down when walking through public and private doorways…

Used doorstop live archive (4/23/25 – Present) started days after the mass shooting at Florida State University in April 2025. “Two university employees were killed and six others wounded in an attack lasting approximately three minutes near and inside the Student Union building…” As a result, new rules were instituted at the University of South Florida requiring that no doors be propped open. Well-worn doorstops from around the art building became the first entries into this archive, which for over a year has posited used doorstops collected from across the country as a commons, a witness, and a center.

The archive continues to grow alongside an essay titled Listening for Monuments, a series of episodic meditations featuring the collection moments as prisms for larger stories of intimacy, violence, the body, and notions of seeing.

The Brock String, invented by Frederick W. Brock (1899–1972), treats stereo blindness (seeing in 3 dimensions), also known as steropsis. Critically, the Brock String–typically a 5-10 foot string with colored bead focal points at regular intervals–proved over time that ‘seeing in stereo’ could be achieved in adulthood. Here the Brock String is reimagined by the artist as a wall drawing tool and a pedagogy–the plastic beads replaced by custom sculpted pastel beads (in collaboration with Mount Vision Pastel Company, Tampa, FL). The artist posits each colored bead as a personal corrective vision prompt and offers workshops for the public to collaborate on forming their own corrective vision prompts.

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A to-scale reproduction of a photography classroom door whose one small window is newly covered in defense of a potential active shooter. The window cover was removed to make this exposure; in the past the window has aided the artist’s teaching demonstrations of using available light, revealing a camera obscura, light temperature, etc.

Rehearsals is an ongoing series of sculptures inspired by a finger ladder, a physical therapy device the artist encountered while learning to walk again after surgery. These typically single-line, vertical, wooden wall-mounted objects are used to restore mobility and range of motion in the shoulder, elbow, or wrist. Since birth the artist, who lives with a congenital birth defect, has never been able to raise their right arm above their right shoulder. As the artist relays “…using the finger ladder for the first time was like being in virtual reality. I was able to finger climb my arm up to full vertical extension. It felt like an agency machine–I could use my arm as a signal to say I am here, or to signal solidarity, or finally, to imagine a broad sweep of individuals or value-bonded groups, seeing themselves emerge in these works.”

The works alternately exist as single and multiple vertical lines, and are created in raw pine, sometimes treated with joint-compound–a wordplay gesture (joints being the operative physical restriction and potential liberatory field) and an emotional layering that allows the artists hand and labor to appear. At times featured as raw pine, at other times joint compound is applied to pine, with additional color being applied, and a second round of joint compound allows for redaction–the artist sands and works down the outer layer to reveal an emerging color field, an interiority of living history.

“…originally trained as a photographer in the early 2000s, i see used white noise sound screens as a surrogate for a subject–mental health–that is largely unphotographable and personal, while widely public in scope and implication…” more here at this link

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Version History (June 8, 2025 – April 27, 2026) traces every adaptation to the artist’s Accessibility Statement over 10 months and is designed as a resource for others in the culture industry. Download the 121 page publication HERE. As part of the artist’s current practice, he’s offering free editing and support to anyone who would like to write one for the first time; please email all requests to

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