Read Our Interview Of Dan Colen From Issue 13: Biodiversity →

 
 

interview by Gideon Jacobs 
photographs by David Brandon Geeting  

 

Many urbanites dream about farm life. They sit in front of their screens, filling out expense reports or arguing with coworkers on Slack, the blue light slowly irradiating whatever constitutes their unique human spirit, and they imagine that digging their hands into soil and pulling out some kind of root vegetable might cure what ails them. That wasn’t Dan Colen. Colen, an artist who is very much a product of New York City, with a name synonymous with the downtown Manhattan art scene of the aughts, didn’t end up owning and operating Sky High Farm out of manifested romantic notions about the rural, agrarian lifestyle. In fact, as I learned over the course of this interview, when he purchased the forty-acre chunk of Hudson Valley land, farming wasn’t even part of the plan. Like much of his art, he allowed form to develop on its own, following some combination of instinct and medium until he ended up with his biggest project yet. Since its first growing season, Sky High has donated 90,000 pounds of produce and 20,000 pounds of protein to help fight food insecurity in New York State, and they are currently working on developing an agricultural training program to support self-empowerment among those affected by the carceral system. The farm is a nonprofit, a complex machine that straddles the complex ecosystems of upstate New York agriculture, food justice, the art world, and more. That Colen ended up here at this stage in his career, devoting his life to this mission, might come as a surprise to many, maybe even to Colen himself. But in a way, that’s what makes the whole endeavor somehow unsurprising. That’s what makes it make sense. Read more.

Dan Colen 'Viscera' Opening at Venus Over Los Angeles

Venus Over Los Angeles presents Viscera, an exhibition of three new bodies of work by Dan Colen in the gallery's incredible new location in Downtown L.A.'s arts district. Each element in Viscera elicits questions about the behavior of physical forms as they come into contact with metaphysical experience. An exhibition highlight, "Canopics" is a series of sculptures cast from the negative space formed by roadside guardrails mangled in automobile accidents. The series title refers to basins used in ancient Egyptian burial ceremonies to contain the viscera, or vital organs, of the dead. As with Colen’s "Miracle" series, "Rainbow Paintings" are based on stills from Fantasia (1940), which the artist sees as Disney’s most abstract film, whose vignettes “address the many guises of creation itself.” There is also a unique sound element Psychics (Interstellar Medium?, which is comprised of a series of recorded psychic readings, documented over a ten-month period beginning in the summer of 2014. Viscera will be on view until June 27th, 2015 at Venus Over Los Angeles, 601 South Anderson Street, Los Angeles, CA. 

Brant Foundation Presents Dan Colen's The L...o...n...g Count

Brass rods, cement slabs, specks of dirt, stainless steel bars, faceted metal studs, cigarette butts, ashes, empty bottles of booze, strands of hair, Dan Colen creates a anti-world that looks left behind by misfits and miscreants. Dan Colen The L...o...n...g Count is on view now un December 21 in Walter De Maria's former studio – the space is now The Brant Foundation Art Study Center at 421 East 6th St, New York. photographs by Fredrica Duke 

It Ain’t Fair 2012 at OHWOW Gallery in Miami

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OHWOW is presents the fifth and final edition of the annual group exhibition It Ain’t Fair (IAF). Coinciding with Art Basel Miami Beach, It Ain’t Fair 2012 celebrates the history and tradition of IAF‘s renowned multimedia production, and closes the chapter on what came to define OHWOW’s identity as a community platform for progressive art in all media. The final IAF moves from the Design District to a 6,000 square foot location on the beach to accommodate a large-scale exhibition and various projects, delivering a climactic conclusion to this definitive enterprise. It Ain‘t Fair 2012 assembles a selection of over 30 contemporary artists, many who contributed in past years, along with several new names, from David Adamo, James Franco, Dan Colen, Terry Richardson, Aurel Schmidt, and others. It Ain't Fair will be on view from December 6 to 9, 2012, 743 Washington Avenue, Miami Beach, FL

Dan Colen Monograph with Text by Harmony Korine

This artist’s book documents Dan Colen’s 2011 exhibition at Gagosian Gallery in New York, as well as his June 2012 Gagosian exhibition in Paris. Drawing from mass media, local environment, and subculture, Dan Colen’s art imbues the ordinary, the disenfranchised, and the tribal with provocative new status. This publication includes over fifty new works, including Colen’s series of Grass, Gum, Confetti, and Stud, with extensive details of the works. There is also text by Harmony Korine. Now available by Rizzoli.

Dan Colen in New York & Paris

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Dan Colen will be having two exhibitions of his unique artworks presented by the Gagosian Gallery in both New York and Paris. On view now publicly for the first time outside the famed Seagrams Building in New York, Dan Colen’s sculpture, entitled Cracks in the Clouds (2010), consists of 13 motorcycles kicked over in a row. Originally shown in the artist’s Poetry exhibition at Gagosian Gallery, the bikes were custom-built and painted to replicate those Colen photographed outside the Hells Angels club on East 3rd Street.  And coming up on June 12, Dan Colen's first solo exhibition in Paris, Out of the Blue, Into the Black is a eulogy in three parts comprising paintings, installation, and a sculpture. The title conflates two songs that open and close Neil Young’s 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps: “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)” and “My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)", with its famous line “It’s better to burn out than to fade away,” which Young wrote in reference to his personal fears of becoming obsolete and, correspondingly, to the then-recent deaths of Elvis Presley and Sid Vicious, and which was invoked many years later by Kurt Cobain in his suicide note. Similarly, Colen has used the lyrics here to evoke a fear of the erosion of influence, to point to the ways in which death inflects celebration, and to remind us of what we try to hold on to, even as it eludes our grasp. Cracks in the Clouds will be on view until September 30, 2012 and Out of the Blue, Into the Blackwill be on view from June 12 to July 28, 2012 Gagosian Gallery, 4 rue de Ponthieu, Paris.