30 March - 7 May 2006
One in the Other is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new paintings by Dan Perfect.
Perfect’s work came to prominence in ‘Death to the Fascist Insect that Preys on the Life of the People’ at Anthony d’Offay Gallery in 2001. A cartoon, Klee-like directory of pictorial schemata, in hard black outline, floated across abstracted grounds of hazy, airbrushed bands of rainbow colour – a subtle reworking of 1960’s post-painterly approach to abstraction. The ground of the paintings carried a bright opalescence that was both fixed and transparent – opaque and illusionistic. The pictorialism was a recurring index of motifs, figures and landscape architecture that owed much of its sovereignty to a lexicon of 1930’s Surrealism and 1950’s Anthropomorphism. In 2002, for these works, Perfect was selected for Beck’s Futures at the ICA, London.
From this way of structuring his images, Perfect started to radicalise his use of the schematic ground. Whereas previously the paintings could be thought of, in both their execution and composition, as following a system of figure and ground, they now collapse into a single, seamless myriad of visual activity. Whilst the bands of colour have disappeared, the lined, ‘drawn’ equation of the earlier work has been retained. This element, however, is now so amplified into a burgeoning cast of characters, squiggles, signs, symbols and leitmotifs, as to become a visual force and landscape itself - as opposed to the descriptive function it served formerly. It is now at the heart of a visual enterprise that encompasses graffiti and automatic drawing as well as the references to 1930’s and 1950’s imagery and painting.
Despite appearing to use an all-over approach to the canvas, Perfect uses a system of separation and layering to translate the freehand and subliminal material that originates from his drawings on paper. This process, whilst affording the freedom of control and coherence, allows for elements of ‘printmaking’ and the ‘collaged’ to appear in the work. This takes away the flurry of expressionism the types of marks used would otherwise, superficially, be inclined to suggest, and helps to articulate the range of vocabulary Perfect can draw upon. Perfect’s work makes a feint towards the random and haphazard, but the rigorous methodology means it can never be painting as nature so much as painting as synthesis. The allusion to landscape, and its inhabiting personages, might indicate desire for a resolved world, but ultimately these new paintings are less concerned with a pictorial narrative than a pictorial necessity.
Dan Perfect has also exhibited at Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York, 2003, Karsten Schubert, London, 2003 and Southampton City Art Gallery, 2005
Crowd Scene 2006
Oil and acrylic on linen,
213 x 183cm
Out to Sea 2006
Oil and acrylic on linen,
213 x 183cm
Hung Out 2005
Oil and acrylic on linenv,
213 x 183cm