ARTIST STATEMENT

Robert Ryman's comment about the nature of painting in the latter half of the twentieth century has always stuck with me: "It's not a question of what to paint, but rather, how to paint it." My paintings are process works that borrow subject matter from sources such as film and photography, physics, biology, x-ray and electron microscope images, and most recently, illustrations from anatomy books. The organic forms I tend to employ are fluid but restrained, and part of their function is to articulate the space that surrounds the form; paint is called to substitute for flesh, for air, for dust particles floating in cinematic light.

I use squeegees, scrapers, and invented brushes to build up many thin layers of paint that produce taut, skin-like surfaces that have almost no evidence of a mark of the hand. Often individual images are combined to form a single larger painting. The bigger picture reads as a chart of microscopic and macroscopic space – a kind of catalog of invisible things – that describes the slow motion dynamics of evolution as it relies on its twin engines of random adaption and mutation. The figures in the paintings are outside of time; they have no up or down, no perspectival geometry, no gravity. They are pictures of the absurd theater that is evolutionary simultaneity, of bodies in various states that have succeeded in achieving their potential, and then are willed by an unseen force to disperse and dissolve into newer and different forms. My studio practice and the processes I invent coincidentally approximate the way nature goes about its business.

The titles to the paintings are significant in that they add a third or fourth layer to layers already present in the paintings. They're often comical, the way nature can appear to be— in my mind, they describe the shortest one-act plays imaginable. Often they rely on language that is usually very specific to a particular discipline, such as names for race horses, or pop music song lyrics, or punch lines to old jokes; I think it fascinating, and useful, that these tropes follow the same set of rules involving random mutation and adaption that drives the life cycle of species.

Dan is represented by Addison/Ripley Fine Art in Washington, DC and Zg Gallery in Chicago, IL.


Solo Exhibitions

  • 2023 "Double Platinum", Addison/Ripley, Washington, DC
  • 2016 "You Are Getting Sleepy", Addison/Ripley, Washington, DC
  • 2010 "Requesting Quiet", Addison/Ripley, Washington, DC
  • 2006 "Glue and Gumption", Addison/Ripley, Washington, DC
  • 2004"Invisible Things", Addison/Ripley, Washington, DC
  • 2002 "Fictions", Zg Gallery, Inc., Chicago, IL
  • 2001"Tales from the Patent Office", Anton Gallery, Washington, DC
  • 1999 "Paintings from Paris", Anton Gallery, Washington, DC
  • 1998 "New Paintings", Anton Gallery, Washington, DC
  • 1997 "Paintings", Anton Gallery, Washington, DC
  • 1991 Graduate Thesis Show, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY
  • 1987 Senior Thesis Show, Georgetown University, Washington, DC

Group Exhibitions

  • 2015 Alchemical Vessels, Healing Arts, Washington, DC
  • 2013 "Anarchistic Abstraction", University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, VA
  • 2012 "Ten Year Anniversary Show", Zg Gallery, Inc., Chicago, IL
  • "Click: Space & Time", Addison/Ripley Fine Art, Washington, DC
  • "All my Friends Are Painters", Addison/Ripley Fine Art, Washington, DC (curated)
  • 2011 Transformer Benefit Auction Exhibition, Mexican Cultural Institute, Washington, DC
  • "Constructs IX", Center for Contemporary Art, Portsmouth, VA
  • "Constructs X", Space 301, Mobile, AL
  • "Strictly Painting", McLean Project for the Arts, McLean, VA
  • 2010 "It's a Beautiful Thing", Jane Haslem Gallery, Washington, DC
  • "Constructs VII", Washington & Lee University, Lexington, VA
  • "Constructs VIII", Center for Contemporary Art, Portsmouth, VA
  • 2009 "Constructs VI", George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
  • 2008 "Constructs V", Mary Washington College, Fredericksburg, VA
  • 2007 "City Hall Art Collection", Wilson Building, Washington, DC
  • 2006 "No Representation", Wharehouse, Washington, DC
  • 2003 "Compendium", Zg Gallery, Inc., Chicago, IL
  • 2002 "12 x 12", Zg Gallery, Inc., Chicago, IL
  • 2001 "Emotional Attachment", District Fine Arts, Washington, DC
  • 2000 "Shimmer", Signal 66, Washington, DC
  • "The Trinity (Desire, Memory, Sin)", film/video installation, Galapagos Art and Performance Space, Brooklyn, NY
  • "Traces", Frostburg State University, Frostburg, MD
  • 1999 "WPA/Corcoran Auction Exhibition", Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
  • Art-O-Matic, The Manhattan Laundry, Washington, DC
  • 1998 "Strictly Painting II", McLean Project for the Arts, McLean, VA
  • "Water", Anton Gallery, Washington, DC
  • "WPA/Corcoran Auction Exhibition", Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
  • 1997 "First Annual Alumni Exhibition", Georgetown University, Washington, DC
  • "Art as Investments, Investments as Art", East 49th Street, New York, NY
  • "Signal 66", Blagden Alley Art Space, Washington, DC
  • "Surface Knowledge", George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
  • "Verticals", Anton Gallery, Washington, DC
  • "Grant Finalists Exhibition", DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Washington, DC
  • 1996 "Bansai Ikkei", Anton Gallery, Washington, DC
  • "The Sublime Landscape", George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
  • "Exposure", Anton Gallery, Washington, DC
  • "1480 Squares", DCAC, Washington, DC
  • 1992 Skowhegan Scholarship Candidates Group Show, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY
  • Pratt MFA Candidates Group Exhibition, curated by Jay Gorney, Puck Building, NY, NY
  • 1988 Georgetown University Fine Arts Kreeger Competition, Washington, DC
  • 1987 Georgetown University Fine Arts Kreeger Competition, Washington, DC
  • Two Person Exhibition, Neuhause Collection, Washington, DC

Awards & Residencies

  • 1998 Cite' Internationale des Arts, residency fellowship, Paris, France
  • 1992 Skowhegan Scholarship Award, residency award, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY
  • 1988 First Prize for Painting and Sculpture, Kreeger Competition, Georgetown University
  • Faculty Purchase Prize, Georgetown University
  • 1987 First Prize for Painting and Printmaking, Kreeger Competition, Georgetown University

Education

  • MFA, Pratt Insitute, Brooklyn, NY, 1992
  • Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, 1992
  • BA, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, 1988

Selected Publications

  • Photoweenie, "All My Friends Are Prizefighters", June 2014
  • The Washington City Paper, "Click: Space and Time", June 2012
  • The Washington Post, "Panels for Discussion", September 30, 2006
  • The Washington Post, "Waxing Familiar", June 17, 2004
  • The Washington Post Sunday Magazine, "The Collectors", October 10, 2001
  • The Washington Review, "Tales From the Patent Office", October/November 2001
  • The Washington Post, "Painting Between the Lines: Treado at Anton Gallery", June 21, 2001
  • The Washington City Paper, "Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear", February 25, 2000
  • New American Painting, May 2000
  • The Washington City Paper, "Another Day Older", June 9, 2000
  • The Washington Times, "Art-O-Matic", June 11, 1999
  • KOAN, "Must See . . .", June, 1998