Dan Colen - Contemporary Art Part II New York Friday, May 13, 2011 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Peres Projects, Los Angeles and Berlin

  • Exhibited

    Berlin, Peres Projects, Dan Colen: No Me, September 30 - November 4, 2006

  • Literature

    J. Cape, Shape of Things to Come, Saatchi Gallery, London 2009, p. 373

  • Catalogue Essay

    In the disjointed art community of the early 2000s, there was one scene of brash, energetic young artists that emerged in downtown New York City and ended up defining the decade. For a while that group—at least from the outside—was spearheaded by photographer Ryan McGinley, whose early reportage photos of Lower East Side friends and dirty, young ne’er-do-wells perfectly captured the vibe and destructive glee of it all. As the decade progressed, other artists from this pocket of close friends surfaced: Dash Snow, Dan Colen, Nate Lowman, Aaron Young, and Agathe Snow, among others. On the outside, they seemed to trade primarily in nihilistic urban imagery, much of which they picked up from the skateboarding and graffiti communities, and critics were quick to peg them (and occasionally write them off) as heterogeneous inheritors of punk, Semina, Basquiat, and a ’90s mix of DIY and shock art. But the reality is that each of these artists was developing a style, technique, and an aesthetic direction that was entirely his or her own. Dan Colen has come out of this now legendary scene to become one of the most accomplished and promising multimedia neo-pop artists of his generation.

    (Ryan McGinley, “Dan Colen”, Interview Magazine, online version)

  • Artist Biography

    Dan Colen

    American • 1979

    American artist Dan Colen has spent most of his career asking himself questions about the editorial decisions artists have to make when creating a scene from scratch on canvas. In his early work, Colen painted mundane interiors punctuated with fantastical elements. This manifested as part of a growing curiosity in the ethereal or divine intervention.

    Colen subsequently stepped away from paint as material and started using found objects as mediums with which to paint. Among these, Colen has used chewing gum, street trash, confetti, feathers, flowers and dirt. This methodology allows Colen to abandon control and create in a more free-form, subconscious manner.

    View More Works

118

Life Marijuana

2006
Mixed media installation comprised of one digital print and four unique framed Lambda prints (accompanied by CD with digital file of print).
Digital print: 125 7/8 x 98 3/8 in. (319.7 x 249.9 cm.); each Lambda print: 14 7/8 x 14 7/8 in. (37.8 x 37.8 cm.)

Estimate
$100,000 - 150,000 

Contemporary Art Part II

13 May 2011
New York