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.
