NEW YORK, NY.- An exhibition of new work by Dan Walsh examines the artist’s ever-expanding vocabulary of material, form and scale. On view are paintings, works on paper, artist books, and sculptures whose geometric patterns and programmatic compositions lead to a profusion of perceptual and psychic effects. Images and objects that at first appear fixed come to disclose complex systems of experiment that lend to manifold historical allusions. The gallery’s exhibition follows Walsh’s major yearlong career survey at the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht.
In ways both refined and economical, three large-scale paintings, titled Expo I, Expo II, and Expo III, prompt the experience of pure, unadulterated looking. Viewed in sequence, the elusive internal logic of each work becomes progressively more intricate—gridded shapes, chromatic gradations, and line weights vary from top to bottom, left to right, or bilaterally across the canvas. “Minimalism, with its grid-oriented and elemental base, has shown to be flexible,” Walsh states. “What was once a rigorous idea about reduction and essentialism is now just a starting point … The most important influence I take away from minimalism is the orientation of the viewer. I always try to emphasize the psychology that occupies the space between the minimalist object/painting and the viewer.”[1]
Composed of stacked modules, two new floor sculptures translate Walsh’s use of the grid as a generative matrix into three-dimensional space. Alternately assembled from chamfered wood blocks or colored resin cubes, the works produce elaborate optical play in which clarity and opacity coexist. A number of new circular wall reliefs similarly employ a simple geometric starting point that expands to yield a multifaceted, almost ornamental, projection into space.
Engaging viewers on a more intimate scale are Walsh’s ink drawings on blotter paper as well as his selection of new artist books. For Walsh, “[bookmaking] is a place to research ideas and show the variations through a succession of images. The story could be simply about ‘compare and contrast’ or maybe a more complex transitions of forms,” such as progressions, additions, subtractions, and reversals.[2] In these works, and a related group of five paintings on board, Walsh explores the cognitive convergence—or divergence—of semiosis and visual perception. Using a vocabulary of well-known icons, including the historical, allegorical, and mechanical, Walsh employs color, sequenced layering, and cinematographic form to destabilize the familiar and create a unique fictional language.
Born in Philadelphia, Walsh lives and works in New York. His work is included in public collections around the world, including the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Walsh has been exhibited at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City; the New Museum in New York; the Centre National d’Art Contemporain in Nice; the Speerstra Foundation in Lausanne; the RISD Museum of Art in Providence; the Rønnebaeksholm, Naestved; the Villa du Parc, Annemasse; and the Kunstverein Medienturm, Graz. His prints and limited-edition books were the subject of a one-person exhibition at the Cabinet des Estampes in Geneva, Switzerland. Walsh was included in the Ljubljana Biennial, Slovenia, the Lyon Biennial of Contemporary Art, France (both 2003), and the Whitney Biennial in Spring 2014. In 2016 he collaborated with his sister, Lexa Walsh, for a two-person exhibition entitled “Both Sides Now” at the Williams College Museum of Art. In 2019 the artist was the subject of a yearlong one-person exhibition at the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht (NL), co-organized by Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht.
[1] “Sign Fiction: Bob Nickas and Dan Walsh in Conversation,” in Dan Walsh: Pressing Matter, exh. cat. (Maastricht, Netherlands: Bonnefantenmuseum, 2019), p.55.
[2] Ibid, p.59.
