Dan Colen

A mark is just a decision, a touch that can go in so many different directions. . . . There’s so much that you’re not seeing, so many decisions. That’s where the art happens. . . . The viewer doesn’t ever get to witness it, but they have to know that it was there and there has to be a space for the imagination.
—Dan Colen

Moving between diverse styles and subjects, Dan Colen investigates the conceptual stakes of materiality and mark making. Interested in how the physical properties of mediums dictate their specific forms and symbolic resonances, Colen oscillates in his work between rigorous artisanal technique and the aesthetics of chance. Alongside his works in oil on canvas, he has often employed unconventional materials such as chewing gum, flowers, and trash, relinquishing control of his work’s final appearance to their unpredictable surfaces. He also produces time-based and three-dimensional works, including animatronic sculptures and performances. With imagery adapted from popular culture, he explodes the boundaries between fine art and subculture, interrogating the dynamic between images and the materials from which they are composed.

Born in Leonia, New Jersey, Colen received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2001. In his earliest works, Colen labored over precise oil renderings of banal interiors—a sloppy apartment bathroom, an adolescent bedroom, a camping tent—into which he introduced the presence of the supernatural—the Blue Fairy, Jesus Christ, twinkling cherubs, his deceased grandfather. A subsequent series, the Candle paintings (2003–10), drew inspiration from the Disney film Pinocchio (1940). In these works, Colen honed in on the moment in which artistic materials suddenly become alive and autonomous from their maker: the space of the canvas embodies Geppetto’s worktable—where Pinocchio becomes “real”—and a message appears in the smoke left by a just-extinguished candle flame. He has described the series as “an attempt at conversing with god or the infinite.”