Dan Rees: Enormous Changes at the Last Minute
Tanya Leighton, Los Angeles is pleased to present 鈥楨normous Changes at the Last Minute鈥�, a solo exhibition by Berlin-based artist Dan Rees. The artist鈥檚 new body of works build upon his experiments with marbling, an image-making technique that for the artist lies somewhere between painting, printmaking and photography. The process, Rees states, 鈥渞eminds me of developing from negatives, preparing the inks on the surface of water, dipping the different canvases into the water, hosing them down, hanging them up to dry and waiting for the result to emerge.鈥� And just like darkroom photography, Rees鈥檚 portrait-sized abstractions bear an intimacy that resists nonfigurative painting鈥檚 impulse to go bigger and bigger. On the contrary, Rees鈥檚 modest portraits require great attention to tiny details as he repeats the ink application process over many weeks until he finds the right balance of forms.
Balance, in the sense above, however, is not limited to the forms contained within an individual piece. 鈥淚t is often the case that in the making of a new work all the previous works will be rendered incomplete by comparison and will be subjected to further re-working,鈥� Rees explains. The artist, in other words, aims to join each individual artwork into what he describes as 鈥渁 collective conceptual unity.鈥� Rather than simply bearing a thematic through line 鈥� as in most curated exhibitions 鈥� each piece in the exhibition owes its final composition to decisions made about other works in the show. Inherent to 鈥楨normous Changes at the Last Minute鈥�, then, are two polarised investments: In one direction, Rees leans into the visual pleasure of his playful formal studies; in the other, he prioritises the whole of the exhibition over its particulars in a manner that calls to mind the anti-formalist commitments of process art.
Process art, a movement that emphasises the activity of making itself over an intended outcome, resists the appreciation of art as discrete objects for the sake of contemplating the macroscopic conditions behind their creation, such as technique, materiality, and physical forces like gravity. In other words, process art pushes back at a sort of uncomplicated and na茂ve view of art, namely that such objects鈥� raison d鈥櫭猼re should be taken for granted. In resistance, process art champions randomness and nontraditional materials over deliberateness and custom, and Rees鈥檚 fascination with marbling certainly teeters on the threshold of such interests. But unlike process art, the artist has constrained his compositions to traditional rectangular substrates, and so one might wonder if the polarity of formal pleasure and processual rigour is an attempt at levelling both.
In the exhibition, the artist has divided the works under two series titles: 鈥楾he Gesture with Which Narratives Once Began鈥� and 鈥楢esthetic Hedonism and the Happiness of Knowledge鈥�. Both titles are subtle references to Theodor Adorno, the prominent German social theorist, whose philosophical dynasty, the Frankfurt School, fiercely debated the politics and social importance of art under capitalism. The allusion to this philosopher underscores the overarching epistemic anxieties that hover over Rees鈥檚 deceptively playful portraits. By dwelling on the inherent dialectical tension between conceptualism and aestheticism, 鈥楨normous Changes at the Last Minute鈥� calls upon the viewer to ask whether both lineages are now in crisis.
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Tanya Leighton, Los Angeles is pleased to present 鈥楨normous Changes at the Last Minute鈥�, a solo exhibition by Berlin-based artist Dan Rees. The artist鈥檚 new body of works build upon his experiments with marbling, an image-making technique that for the artist lies somewhere between painting, printmaking and photography. The process, Rees states, 鈥渞eminds me of developing from negatives, preparing the inks on the surface of water, dipping the different canvases into the water, hosing them down, hanging them up to dry and waiting for the result to emerge.鈥� And just like darkroom photography, Rees鈥檚 portrait-sized abstractions bear an intimacy that resists nonfigurative painting鈥檚 impulse to go bigger and bigger. On the contrary, Rees鈥檚 modest portraits require great attention to tiny details as he repeats the ink application process over many weeks until he finds the right balance of forms.
Balance, in the sense above, however, is not limited to the forms contained within an individual piece. 鈥淚t is often the case that in the making of a new work all the previous works will be rendered incomplete by comparison and will be subjected to further re-working,鈥� Rees explains. The artist, in other words, aims to join each individual artwork into what he describes as 鈥渁 collective conceptual unity.鈥� Rather than simply bearing a thematic through line 鈥� as in most curated exhibitions 鈥� each piece in the exhibition owes its final composition to decisions made about other works in the show. Inherent to 鈥楨normous Changes at the Last Minute鈥�, then, are two polarised investments: In one direction, Rees leans into the visual pleasure of his playful formal studies; in the other, he prioritises the whole of the exhibition over its particulars in a manner that calls to mind the anti-formalist commitments of process art.
Process art, a movement that emphasises the activity of making itself over an intended outcome, resists the appreciation of art as discrete objects for the sake of contemplating the macroscopic conditions behind their creation, such as technique, materiality, and physical forces like gravity. In other words, process art pushes back at a sort of uncomplicated and na茂ve view of art, namely that such objects鈥� raison d鈥櫭猼re should be taken for granted. In resistance, process art champions randomness and nontraditional materials over deliberateness and custom, and Rees鈥檚 fascination with marbling certainly teeters on the threshold of such interests. But unlike process art, the artist has constrained his compositions to traditional rectangular substrates, and so one might wonder if the polarity of formal pleasure and processual rigour is an attempt at levelling both.
In the exhibition, the artist has divided the works under two series titles: 鈥楾he Gesture with Which Narratives Once Began鈥� and 鈥楢esthetic Hedonism and the Happiness of Knowledge鈥�. Both titles are subtle references to Theodor Adorno, the prominent German social theorist, whose philosophical dynasty, the Frankfurt School, fiercely debated the politics and social importance of art under capitalism. The allusion to this philosopher underscores the overarching epistemic anxieties that hover over Rees鈥檚 deceptively playful portraits. By dwelling on the inherent dialectical tension between conceptualism and aestheticism, 鈥楨normous Changes at the Last Minute鈥� calls upon the viewer to ask whether both lineages are now in crisis.
Artists on show
