A170130184109 1

Purgatory Paintings

日期
08.05.2017 | 14.07.2017
画廊

Massimo De Carlo is pleased to present Purgatory Paintings, a new exhibition by the American artist Dan Colen. The exhibition, which will take place in the Milan gallery in Piazza Belgioioso, will open to the public on the 9th of May 2017.

Throughout his practice Dan Colen has used the canvas as the medium to investigate the transcendental value of banality, encompassing fairy-tales and found objects to draft a narrative that elevates materiality itself by shifting between non-representational subjects and figurative ones.

The Purgatory Paintings are a continuation of the artist’s pursuit of placing art between the worlds of abstraction and representation. Each canvas, seen from a distance, looks like cloudscapes, however, as one’s body enters the close physical space of the canvas, the subject matter dissolves into a fog of formlessness and colour.

A skilful and thorough labour process is involved in the making of the Purgatory Paintings, where the end result is a painting comprised of myriad translucent layers – none of which reveal any hard edges or brushwork. Instead, paint in the Purgatory series behaves in much the same manner that clouds do themselves: a suspension of liquid aerosols so finely scattered as to appear like a formless gas one must squint to perceive.

The notion of purgatory can be applied to the paintings themselves, which are caught in the midst of an investigation of the painterly gesture, and to the subjects of the works: looking at the clouds in the paintings it is impossible to know whether a storm is breaking apart or just setting in, whether the sun is on its way up, or on its way down. Both time and space, then, are unresolvable, and the resulting works appropriately conflate nothingness with the infinite. Foregrounded shapes stand in stark contrast to a deeper atmosphere, confusing the gradations in between. Like Purgatory itself, one cannot perceive the distance out or discern whether there is no middle ground or only middle ground.

The exhibition, that marks Dan Colen’s return to Italy after six years, offers an insight into the way that we now experience nature and consciousness through hastily defined, synthetic filters allowing theatrical and cartoonish fantasy to become an ideal platform on which to stage the contemporary sublime.

Dan Colen

丹·科伦 (DAN COLEN) 1979年出生于美国新泽西州,目前在纽约生活和工作。


多年来,科伦的创作探索多种风格和主题,从抽象的混合媒介到具象绘画、电子动画雕塑和行为艺术。他始终致力于质疑并重塑当代性的符号化本质。其作品经常探索作品所传递的符号与意义的能力,深入探讨大众媒体和亚文化语言的社会意义。


近年来,科伦的关注点扩展到极富社会凝聚力的社区类项目。2011年,他创立了一家立足本土的非营利组织“SKY HIGH FARM”。


其作品被许多重要机构收藏,包括:奥尔布赖特·诺克斯艺术馆,纽约水牛城;阿斯楚普·费恩利博物馆,奥斯陆;斯德哥尔摩现代博物馆,斯德哥尔摩;NEWPORT STREET GALLERY,伦敦;惠特尼美国艺术博物馆,纽约。