Dan Colen: Sweet Liberty

Fun exhibition at the Newport Street Gallery looking at the career of Dan Colen who has been exhibiting since 2001.

From the first room which contained a huge US flag on a full sized crumped flag pole I was hooked. Of course it had visual links to the recent Jasper Johns exhibition. Who could resist a giant Scooby Doo puppet which gentle moved and dipped. I had to go back and look at this a second time after I’d finished the show. I was entranced.

How about a Pollock like large canvas but made with chewing gum, bit yucky but it looked great! I was fascinated by the two Viscera picture made up of layers of pigment in fractionally different shades which seemed to pulse as you looked at them. An effect similar to Bridget Riley stripes and I couldn’t look at them for very long.

All through the gallery there had been large silhouettes cut through the walls which were unexplained until the last room where there were large models of the artist and cartoon figures on the floor and the idea was that they had fought their way through the space and were now spent on the floor.

I also have to mention the tapping noise on the staircase made by a pair of shoes on the ceiling dancing with no body, a wonderful ghostly effect.

Closed on 28 January 2018

 

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