Dan Colen
Dan Colen
Spanning painting, sculpture, photography, performance, and installation, Dan Colen’s oeuvre explores the tensions between figuration and abstraction, the abject and the sublime, the timely and the timeless. Colen’s earliest paintings investigate the forms and characters that populate our collective imagination. Today, he continues to probe cultural mythologies and archetypes in various media, appropriating imagery from animated films, mail-order catalogues, modernist abstraction, and street graffiti to create an artistic lexicon that insistently collapses the boundaries between high and low.
In 2006, Colen began making colorful and formally expressive paintings using chewing gum instead of paint, beginning a long period of material experimentation in which he mined and questioned various established historical styles—Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, and Conceptualism, for example. That year, three of the artist’s megalithic rock sculptures featuring chewing gum and graffiti were included in the Whitney Biennial. Using flowers, dirt, grass, tar and feathers, Mylar confetti, and street trash, Colen’s abstract surfaces replicate street art, accumulations of bird droppings, and nonsensical slogans on monuments and public sites. His 2015 exhibition at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, presented a group of multicolored abstract paintings done in bubblegum, bridging the gap between Abstract Expressionism and sidewalk detritus. Recent sculptural installations, such as Cracks in the Clouds (2010) at New York’s Seagram Building and At Least They Died Together (2014) at the Brant Foundation, Greenwich, Connecticut, imbue the spare language of Minimalism with emotional depth. Colen continues to pursue a variety of concerns with conceptual rigor, humor, and experimental innovation.
Dan Colen was born in 1979 in Leonia, New Jersey. He received his BFA in 2001 from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence. His work is held in various public collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and the de la Cruz Collection Contemporary Art Space, Miami. Recent solo exhibitions include Dan Colen – Works from the Astrup Fearnley Collection, Oslo (2018); Sweet Liberty at Newport Street Gallery, London (2017) Help! at the Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich, Connecticut (2014); The L...o...n...g Count at the Walter De Maria Building, New York (2014); Psychic Slayer at the Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, Denmark (2015); Shake the Elbow at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo (2015); and Oil Painting at the Dallas Contemporary (2016).
Dan Colen currently lives and works in New York.
Selected Works
Video
Dan Colen: Mailorder Mother Purgatory
May 11, 2018
Exhibitions
Museum Exhibitions
Selected Press
L'Officiel | Greener Pastures: 7 Artists That Call Upstate New York Home
January 18, 2021
V Magazine | V Magazine Staff Picks Their Favorite Moment In Our History
December 31, 2020
Interview Magazine | Artist Dan Colen Has A Farm
February 18, 2020
V Magazine | Welcome to the Wild, Wild West
February 12, 2020
New York Magazine | What Artist Dan Colen Can’t Live Without
February 7, 2020
WWD | Dover Street Market Joins Forces With Sky High Farms
November 22, 2019
Musee Magazine | Walking Tall: Interview with Dan Colen
June 24, 2019
Office Magazine | Dan Colen, Desertscapes & Wile E. Coyote
December 4, 2018
Artnet | ‘The Art World Mechanism Really Wants to Define You’: Onetime Bad-Boy Artist Dan Colen on Achieving Maturity in His Work
July 6, 2018
Blouin Artinfo | Top Art Shows in New York This Week, June 8 through 14: Giacometti to Joaquín Torres-García
June 7, 2018
Artnet | Wizened Dan Colen Tackles the Anxieties of Adulthood and Mailorder Catalogues at Lévy Gorvy
May 11, 2018
Widewalls | 8 Gallery Shows to See in New York During Frieze Week
May 2, 2018
Surface Magazine | Weekend Cheat Sheet: April 30 - May 6, 2018
May 2, 2018
Blouin Artinfo | “Mailorder Mother Purgatory” at Lévy Gorvy, New York
May 1, 2018
Art Daily | Lévy Gorvy opens first exhibition with Dan Colen
May 1, 2018
Artlyst | Alt Power 100 ArtLyst 2017 – Meet The Alternative Powerhouses
October 31, 2017
CNN | Frieze Week 2017: Curator Hans Ulrich Obrist's picks
October 5, 2017
Artnews | Dan Colen on His Rollicking, Career-Spanning Show at Damien Hirst’s Gallery in London
October 3, 2017
Artsy | What Sold at EXPO Chicago
September 17, 2017
Artdaily | Lévy Gorvy to represent Dan Colen
June 1, 2017
Artlyst | Dan Colen To Be Represented By Lévy Gorvy In New International Partnership
June 1, 2017
Artnet | Lévy Gorvy to Co-Represent Dan Colen, the Reformed ‘Bad Boy’ of New York’s Art World
May 31, 2017
Artnews | Lévy Gorvy to Represent Dan Colen in Collaboration with Gagosian, Massimo De Carlo
May 31, 2017
More Information
Artists
Alexander Calder
Enrico Castellani
Chung Sang-Hwa
Francesco Clemente
Dan Colen
Willem de Kooning
Lucio Fontana
Gego
Yves Klein
Jutta Koether
Seung-taek Lee
Robert Motherwell
Senga Nengudi
Roman Opalka
Adrian Piper
Michelangelo Pistoletto
Carol Rama
Martial Raysse
Peter Regli
Germaine Richier
Karin Schneider
Joel Shapiro
Kazuo Shiraga
Pierre Soulages
Pat Steir
Tu Hongtao
Günther Uecker
Zao Wou-Ki
Specializing in Works By
- Terry Adkins
- Vincenzo Agnetti
- Carl Andre
- Diane Arbus
- Jean Arp
- Francis Bacon
- John Baldessari
- Jean-Michel Basquiat
- Alighiero Boetti
- Lee Bontecou
- Louise Bourgeois
- Mark Bradford
- Constantin Brancusi
- Cecily Brown
- Alberto Burri
- Sérgio Camargo
- Vija Celmins
- John Chamberlain
- Eduardo Chillida
- Lygia Clark
- George Condo
- Joseph Cornell
- Gino de Dominicis
- Nicolas de Staël
- Richard Diebenkorn
- PETER DOIG
- Jean Dubuffet
- Sam Francis
- Helen Frankenthaler
- Lucian Freud
- Alberto Giacometti
- Gilbert & George
- Johannes Girardoni
- Sonia Gomes
- Julio González
- Arshile Gorky
- Adolph Gottlieb
- Mark Grotjahn
- Philip Guston
- David Hammons
- Keith Haring
- Damien Hirst
- David Hockney
- Thomas Houseago
- Jasper Johns
- Donald Judd
- Ellsworth Kelly
- Anselm Kiefer
- Martin Kippenberger
- Franz Kline
- Jeff Koons
- Jannis Kounellis
- Lee Krasner
- Barbara Kruger
- Yayoi Kusama
- Gerald Laing
- Fernand Léger
- Roy Lichtenstein
- Liza Lou
- Tsuyoshi Maekawa
- René Magritte
- Piero Manzoni
- Brice Marden
- Agnes Martin
- Henri Matisse
- Fausto Melotti
- Joel Mesler
- Eleanore Mikus
- Joan Miró
- Joan Mitchell
- Amedeo Modigliani
- Piet Mondrian
- Paulo Monteiro
- Henry Moore
- François Morellet
- Bruce Nauman
- Barnett Newman
- Albert Oehlen
- Claes Oldenburg
- Francis Picabia
- Pablo Picasso
- Lari Pittman
- Sigmar Polke
- Jackson Pollock
- Richard Prince
- Robert Rauschenberg
- Charles Ray
- Ad Reinhardt
- Gerhard Richter
- Jean Paul Riopelle
- Mark Rothko
- Ed Ruscha
- Robert Ryman
- Salvatore Scarpitta
- Thomas Schütte
- Richard Serra
- Cindy Sherman
- Jeff Sonhouse
- Clyfford Still
- Rudolf Stingel
- Mark Tansey
- Mickalene Thomas
- James Turrell
- Cy Twombly
- Andy Warhol
- Tom Wesselmann
- Franz West
- Jonas Wood
- Christopher Wool