Dan Shaw-Town
Galleria 1/9unosunove is pleased to announce the solo exhibition by English artist, New York based Dan Shaw-Town (1983, UK).
Dan Shaw-Town is interested in using a familiar visual language, and in this show the larger wall hung works all adhere to a simple striped pattern, a common aesthetic, that is often associated with the ‘background’.
Using traditional processes of mark-making with graphite on paper, Dan Shaw-Town folds, crumples, flattens and reworks drawings so that they become simultaneously polished and worn to unveil their hidden potential. Drawings are erased, sanded and painted to achieve a wide array of surfaces and textures, many of which seem at first to sit uncomfortably on the paper.
With this system in place Shaw-Town is able to approach each piece in a routine manner, the covering of the paper being the primary process. At first glance the works seem to be enamoured with hard-edged minimalist painting. However it soon becomes very clear that the works display an almost total irreverence for this movement, as the scuffed surfaces lay bare the visible marks demonstrating the artists physical and repetitive process.
The exhibition consists of wall and floor based work that occupies a space somewhere between drawing and sculpture. Each piece consists of dense graphite covered paper sheets often folded, kneaded and creased to create varying surfaces and compositional markings. Spray paint is also used as either a ‘primer’ for the graphite or as a ‘finish’, in both cases the spray acts as a tool to affect the graphite rather than as an autonomous accompanying medium.
The works atop steel display tables are layered arrangements of partially oscure works that could be seen as rejections, failed drawings perhaps, better displayed as concealed objects. There is a slightly unsettling tension in knowing that what appears as a temporary moment is indeed a final resting point, suggesting these sculptures with their material flatness and repose are as much concerned with potential as they are anything else.
For any further information please contact:
gallery@unosunove.com