4 Dan Colen Untitled 2006 - 07 oil on canvas, in 5 parts (i), (iv) 24 x 17 7/8 in. (61 x 45.5 cm.) (ii) 27 7/8 x 21 7/8 in. (71 x 55.5 cm.) (iii) 48 x 24 in. (122 x 61 cm.) (v) 16 1/2 x 10 5/8 in. (42 x 27 cm.) Each signed and dated on the reverse.
Provenance Victoria Miro, London Acquired from the above by the present owner, 2007 Exhibited London, Victoria Miro, Absent Without Leave, February 17 – March 17, 2009 Catalogue Essay "I have an idea that's greater than what I could do on my own. There's an energy where everybody is invested." DAN COLEN, 2013 Undeniably and unapologetically discordant, Dan Colen has captivated the Millennial generation with his irreverent and often outrageous aesthetic. Reinterpreting nihilistic urban imagery and the youthful yet sinister subculture of New York’s artistic underworld, Colen’s experimental canvases unite found objects and traditional painterly media in a truly contemporary homage to twenty-first century urban culture. Incorporating the quotidian – spray paint, chewing gum, whoopee cushions, and even basketball back boards – Colen’s compositions reference the Duchampian legacy of the “readymade” while rejecting Pop Art’s overt appropriation. Concerned primarily with process rather than product, Colen’s dynamically destructive oeuvre embodies the gut, grit, and gall of an heir to punk and Pop, suggesting an artist poised to excite and entice his audience for years to come. Initially celebrated for his abstract, photo-realist paintings, as Colen’s “bad boy” art world reputation flourished, the artist expanded his practice, embracing the graffiti and clutter of the Lower East Side’s grimy streets. Imbued with a certain sense of rebelliousness, the graffiti works that characterized Colen’s exhibition in the 2006 Whitney Biennial were, in his words, inspired by the “…things you would, you know, come up to like walking through the woods, like teenagers would kind of set up camp and drink beer and sometimes spray paint all over them [...] and so that's where it came from.” (Dan Colen in “Artist Dan Colen Talks About Religion, The Art World, And Inspiration,” The Huffington Post, October 3, 2011) Indebted to Jean-Michel-Basquiat’s gestural and graffiti-like canvases and Christopher Wool’s pop culture requisitions, Colen extends the “street art” aesthetic beyond bold-faced, stenciled characters and pervasive juvenile imagery, instead reimagining raw, mundane materials in an innovative abstract expression of artistic vivacity. Untitled, 2007 is an energetic investigation of commonplace detritus – the multifaceted manifestation of Colen’s instinctive, impetuous approach to the artistic statement. Engaging the canvas in a haphazard, almost audacious manner, Colen creates his Birdshit series by flinging oil paint across a pristine, white base, soiling the surfaces with dramatic agglomerations simulating the spontaneous pigeon excrement so integral to the urban landscape. Reflecting upon this series, Colen described the Birdshit paintings: “I've made this large series of 62 canvases that I kind of threw paint at in different ways so they end up looking like they are made of bird shit. They vary in size, touch and colour. Some of them look like Pollocks, some look very realistic, others are painterly, some are dumb, some are elegant, some are beautiful.” (Dan Colen quoted in "My paintings look like shit," The Guardian Art & Design Blog, February 16, 2007) A trompe l’oeil arrangement, Untitled, 2007 unites five of these tableaux in a conversant composition of chartreuse, olive, and seafoam splatters – a monument to the contemporary cityscape and its gritty yet artful milieu. The subtle connectivity between Colen’s diverse body of work is an active dialogue between the readymade and the raw material. Influenced profoundly by his contemporaries – Ryan McGinley and Dash Snow for example – the artist’s Birdshit series offers the viewer a glimpse of the captivating downtown-cool to which few are privy. Providing insight into his own struggle with artistic celebrity and the challenge of creativity, Colen notes, “It’s such a paradox. You come from this place where you want fame; you don’t want to be bourgeois, but you want to be successful. You want t
4 Dan Colen Untitled 2006 - 07 oil on canvas, in 5 parts (i), (iv) 24 x 17 7/8 in. (61 x 45.5 cm.) (ii) 27 7/8 x 21 7/8 in. (71 x 55.5 cm.) (iii) 48 x 24 in. (122 x 61 cm.) (v) 16 1/2 x 10 5/8 in. (42 x 27 cm.) Each signed and dated on the reverse.
Provenance Victoria Miro, London Acquired from the above by the present owner, 2007 Exhibited London, Victoria Miro, Absent Without Leave, February 17 – March 17, 2009 Catalogue Essay "I have an idea that's greater than what I could do on my own. There's an energy where everybody is invested." DAN COLEN, 2013 Undeniably and unapologetically discordant, Dan Colen has captivated the Millennial generation with his irreverent and often outrageous aesthetic. Reinterpreting nihilistic urban imagery and the youthful yet sinister subculture of New York’s artistic underworld, Colen’s experimental canvases unite found objects and traditional painterly media in a truly contemporary homage to twenty-first century urban culture. Incorporating the quotidian – spray paint, chewing gum, whoopee cushions, and even basketball back boards – Colen’s compositions reference the Duchampian legacy of the “readymade” while rejecting Pop Art’s overt appropriation. Concerned primarily with process rather than product, Colen’s dynamically destructive oeuvre embodies the gut, grit, and gall of an heir to punk and Pop, suggesting an artist poised to excite and entice his audience for years to come. Initially celebrated for his abstract, photo-realist paintings, as Colen’s “bad boy” art world reputation flourished, the artist expanded his practice, embracing the graffiti and clutter of the Lower East Side’s grimy streets. Imbued with a certain sense of rebelliousness, the graffiti works that characterized Colen’s exhibition in the 2006 Whitney Biennial were, in his words, inspired by the “…things you would, you know, come up to like walking through the woods, like teenagers would kind of set up camp and drink beer and sometimes spray paint all over them [...] and so that's where it came from.” (Dan Colen in “Artist Dan Colen Talks About Religion, The Art World, And Inspiration,” The Huffington Post, October 3, 2011) Indebted to Jean-Michel-Basquiat’s gestural and graffiti-like canvases and Christopher Wool’s pop culture requisitions, Colen extends the “street art” aesthetic beyond bold-faced, stenciled characters and pervasive juvenile imagery, instead reimagining raw, mundane materials in an innovative abstract expression of artistic vivacity. Untitled, 2007 is an energetic investigation of commonplace detritus – the multifaceted manifestation of Colen’s instinctive, impetuous approach to the artistic statement. Engaging the canvas in a haphazard, almost audacious manner, Colen creates his Birdshit series by flinging oil paint across a pristine, white base, soiling the surfaces with dramatic agglomerations simulating the spontaneous pigeon excrement so integral to the urban landscape. Reflecting upon this series, Colen described the Birdshit paintings: “I've made this large series of 62 canvases that I kind of threw paint at in different ways so they end up looking like they are made of bird shit. They vary in size, touch and colour. Some of them look like Pollocks, some look very realistic, others are painterly, some are dumb, some are elegant, some are beautiful.” (Dan Colen quoted in "My paintings look like shit," The Guardian Art & Design Blog, February 16, 2007) A trompe l’oeil arrangement, Untitled, 2007 unites five of these tableaux in a conversant composition of chartreuse, olive, and seafoam splatters – a monument to the contemporary cityscape and its gritty yet artful milieu. The subtle connectivity between Colen’s diverse body of work is an active dialogue between the readymade and the raw material. Influenced profoundly by his contemporaries – Ryan McGinley and Dash Snow for example – the artist’s Birdshit series offers the viewer a glimpse of the captivating downtown-cool to which few are privy. Providing insight into his own struggle with artistic celebrity and the challenge of creativity, Colen notes, “It’s such a paradox. You come from this place where you want fame; you don’t want to be bourgeois, but you want to be successful. You want t
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.jpg "Source: Christie's")
.jpg "Source: Christie's")
