Artist Spotlight
Moving between diverse styles and subjects, Dan Colen investigates the conceptual stakes of materiality and mark making. Alongside explorations in unconventional mediums including chewing gum, flowers, and metal studs, he continually returns to oil painting and representation, conducting an ever-evolving inquiry into the objecthood and authority of painting as a medium.
Created in response to the covid-19 pandemic, the Artist Spotlight series highlights individual artists, one week at a time, whose exhibitions have been affected by the health crisis. A single artwork by the artist is made available with pricing information for forty-eight hours only.
Artist Spotlight: Dan Colen features a work directly from his exhibition HELP in New York. For more information, please contact the gallery at collecting@gagosian.com.
#GagosianSpotlight
Photo: Eric Piasecki
Dan Colen: Sky High Farm
In this video, Dan Colen speaks about his inspiration in founding Sky High Farm as a way to address food insecurity and improve access to fresh, nutritious food for underserved communities in New York. Established in 2011, the 40-acre farm raises pasture-based livestock and grows organic fruit and vegetables exclusively for donation.
The Bigger Picture
Sky High Farm × Project EATS
Dan Colen and Linda Goode Bryant are both artists who have founded nonprofits devoted to food justice. Here they speak about art, food, and life, including how they arrived at farming and the urgency of their projects’ missions during the current health crisis.
A Single Moment: Dan Colen and Francesco Bonami
Dan Colen joins Francesco Bonami in a conversation about absence and nostalgia, decadence and decay, progress and failure—and about help, the theme of his most recent body of paintings.
In Conversation
Dan Colen with Hans Ulrich Obrist
Against the backdrop of his survey exhibition Sweet Liberty, Dan Colen speaks about his work with Hans Ulrich Obrist, starting with his earliest interest in art and continuing up to the recent Desert paintings (2015–19).
Dan Colen: Carry On Cowboy
Gagosian Quarterly presents Dan Colen’s Carry On Cowboy. This performance first took place during the exhibition Dan Colen: High Noon at Gagosian, Beverly Hills.
Dan Colen: At Least They Died Together
Gagosian Quarterly presents Dan Colen’s At Least They Died Together. This performance first took place during the exhibition Dan Colen: High Noon at Gagosian, Beverly Hills.
Related Exhibitions
Related News
In Conversation
Dan Colen, Aimee Meredith Cox, Hank Willis Thomas
Moderated by Ora Wise
Thursday, May 6, 2021, 5pm edt
In partnership with Dover Street Market, Gagosian will host an online conversation between Dan Colen, artist and founder of Sky High Farm, Aimee Meredith Cox, associate professor of Anthropology and African American Studies at Yale University and author of the award-winning monograph Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship, and Hank Willis Thomas, Conceptual artist and cofounder of For Freedoms. Moderated by Ora Wise, executive director of Sky High Farm, the group will explore the transformative power of art making, the politics of collaboration, and the role of creative expression within social justice movements. To join, register at eventbrite.com.
This talk is part of a tribute, organized by Frieze New York, honoring the Vision & Justice Project and its founder Sarah Elizabeth Lewis. The Vision & Justice Project is dedicated to examining art’s central role in understanding the relationship between race and citizenship in the United States.
Left to right: Dan Colen. Photo: Andrew Zuckerman. Aimee Meredith Cox. Photo: Frederick Williams. Hank Willis Thomas. Photo: Andrea Blanch. Ora Wise. Photo: Stephen Vixjo
Partnership
Dan Colen × Dover Street Market
Twelve brands create exclusive merchandise to support Sky High Farm
Following their February 2020 partnership, Sky High Farm and Dover Street Market are launching an ambitious yearlong project featuring merchandise collaborations across the industries of fashion, art, film, food, and design. For the first iteration, Sky High Farm founder Dan Colen has selected twelve independently minded brands allied by a shared sense of civic responsibility to create exclusive garments or accessories bearing the farm’s signature artwork—created by Joana Avillez—to be sold online and at Dover Street Market’s New York and Los Angeles locations. Raising both funds and awareness, the collaboration will support Sky High Farm’s commitment to standing up against inequity in our food systems and to providing sustenance, nutrition, healing, and new opportunities for underserved communities.
Sky High Farm T-shirts with illustrations by Joana Avillez. Photo: Quil Lemons
Online Reading
Dan Colen
High Noon
Dan Colen: High Noon is available for online reading from May 20 through June 19 as part of Artist Spotlight: Dan Colen. The book documents two performance pieces by the artist, Carry On Cowboy and At Least They Died Together (both 2018), and a related exhibition of Desert paintings (2015–19), presented at Gagosian, Beverly Hills. The volume features an essay by Douglas Fogle, as well as a conversation between Colen, Fogle, and choreographer Dimitri Chamblas.
Dan Colen: High Noon (New York: Gagosian, 2020)
Museum Exhibitions
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Reflections
Matt Black × Gana Art
November 1, 2019–January 5, 2020
Gana Art Center and Gana Art Hannam, Seoul
ganaart.com
In collaboration with filmmaker Matt Black, this exhibition is centered around his short film series titled Reflections, which features conversations with contemporary artists. Through his interviews, Black paints a picture of the rapidly changing contemporary art scene, revealing the stories behind the artworks. Following the film’s theme, Gana Art has curated this exhibition to feature works by these artists, which include Dan Colen, Rachel Feinstein, Jeff Koons, Harmony Korine, Sterling Ruby, Taryn Simon, and Blair Thurman, among others.
Installation view, Reflections: Matt Black × Gana Art, Gana Art Center and Gana Art Hannam, Seoul, November 1, 2019–January 5, 2020. Artwork © Sterling Ruby
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Dan Colen
Works from the Astrup Fearnley Collection
May 24–September 15, 2018
Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo
www.afmuseet.no
This exhibition of works from the Astrup Fearnley Collection will bring together a corpus of Dan Colen’s paintings (made from oil, chewing gum, confetti, flowers, and lemon juice) as well as sculpture, photographs, and film. Embodiments of moments that have taken on aesthetic form, the works present fragmented stories told in the first person about the artist and his immediate environment. They are dialogues with society and commentaries on art history that often reference political issues, mixing high and low cultural values.
Dan Colen, No Way Jose, 2008–09 © Dan Colen. Photo: Christopher Burke
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Dan Colen
Sweet Liberty
October 4, 2017–January 28, 2018
Newport Street Gallery, London
www.newportstreetgallery.com
This exhibition is Dan Colen’s first major solo exhibition in London and spans more than fifteen years of his art making. The show features new works, including large-scale installations, alongside significant early pieces.
Installation view, Dan Colen: Sweet Liberty, Newport Street Gallery, London, October 4, 2017–January 28, 2018. Artwork © Dan Colen. Photo by Prudence Cumings Associates Ltd © Victor Marta Ltd.
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Dan Colen in
Ryan McGinley: The Kids Were Alright
February 11–August 20, 2017
Museum of Contemporary Art Denver
mcadenver.org
Featured in this survey of Ryan McGinley’s early work is Dan Colen’s Secrets and Cymbals, Smoke and Scissors (My Friend Dash’s Wall in the Future) (2004–06/2016). This massive sculpture––the artist’s first––is also a monumental painting. Spanning almost ten feet, the freestanding work is comprised of hundreds of small oil paintings on paper or foam, each a 1:1 trompe l’oeil representation of a corresponding photograph, newspaper clipping, or object that hung in an identical position on Dash Snow’s apartment wall in the early 2000s. The apartment was a gathering place for friends and artists, among them Colen’s childhood friend Ryan McGinley.
Dan Colen, Secrets and Cymbals, Smoke and Scissors (My Friend Dash’s Wall in the Future), 2004–06/2016