Dan Colen. Help

About

I’m interested in the fragility of the moment. When painting, each brushstroke is an opportunity to consider and preserve that moment. Each mark is a decision, from the moment the brush collides with the canvas, and each one can go in so many different directions.
—Dan Colen

Moving between diverse styles and subjects, Colen investigates the conceptual stakes of materiality and mark making. In his earliest paintings, elements of the supernatural intrude into naturalistic renderings of interior spaces, while his more recent canvases explore the technical, physical, and thematic limits of the medium itself. Colen has often worked with unconventional materials such as chewing gum, soil, and trash, relinquishing control of his work’s final appearance to their unpredictable surfaces. Nevertheless, representational imagery has remained a through line across his oeuvre, allowing him to conduct an ever-evolving inquiry into the objecthood and authority of painting as a medium.