Dan Colen: Oil Painting
Dallas Contemporary April 16th, 2016
The Brant Foundation Loan Program
Dallas Contemporary
April 16, 2016 – August 21, 2016
Dan Colen, Whatever, 2007-2010, Graphite and ink on paper, 9 x 11 inches
PRESS RELEASE: This exhibition examines the artistic process of Dan Colen (b. 1979) over the course of the last 15 years, both within particular series and also across the development of different bodies of work. Colen studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he graduated in 2001. He then moved immediately to New York City, not far from where he grew up and where he continues to live and work today.
While he has become known for making paintings with everyday materials such as chewing gum, metal studs, and flowers, Colen began his career with oil painting, and paint itself has continued to buoy the large part of his exploration. Paint (as well as its conspicuous alternatives) often constitutes both medium and subject matter simultaneously in the artist’s work. This self-reflexive function, painting about paint, is usually associated with abstraction, but Colen instead uses the same approach to confound the distinction between abstract and representational art.
For the first time,Oil Painting examines Colen’s exhaustive, widely arrayed working processes in this most traditional of mediums. From the meticulous progression of mapping, editing, intertwining, and transferal typical of his early, highly detailed paintings to the multilateral, experience-driven approach of his more experimental works, Colen maintains an insatiable curiosity about what kinds of marks are available to him as an artist. The works on view here chart a full spectrum of the artist’s control over and surrender to the mark, as well as the potencies activated by the interaction between mark and viewer.
Curated by Peter Doroshenko, Executive Director
