Dan Levenson, Recent Work, 2023, Exhibition View
Praz-Delavallade Los Angeles is pleased to present American artist Dan Levenson's Recent Work, Levenson's third solo exhibition with the gallery. Recent Work will open in Los Angeles on 16 September and will run through 14 October 2023.
Dan Levenson's Recent Work, includes a series of hypnotic paintings based on concentric circles, large-scale paintings in shades of black, as well as works on paper. All works are done in oil, artificially aged through a variety of processes, and signed with a unique name that Levenson imagines belonged to a student of the State Art Academy, Zürich (SKZ for short), a bygone, modernist school of the artist's own invention. Also on display is a single sculptural object: a weathered, primer-splattered storage box, a classroom relic rescued from the ruins of the fictional school. The box contains a number of small paintings, some of which have been left intentionally unfinished.
On the surface, Levenson's geometric exercises recall various schools - Bauhaus, Black Mountain College, and Russian Constructivism - and exhibit those formal concerns so championed by modernism. However, through the narrative of the SKZ, his simulation of time's ravages upon materials, and the inclusion not only of artworks but studio paraphernalia, Levenson slyly embraces the very sense of theatricality that modernism largely and famously eschewed. Set apart from "zombie formalism," Levenson's work is undead yet aware, inviting us to grapple with the contested history of the 20th century as it entertains questions - philosophical, ideological and pedagogical - about the nature and purpose of individual expression. Ultimately, these works create a sort of alienated modernism, at once evoking failures of past artistic movements and a longing for a lost utopian spirit.
Born in New York City, Dan Levenson obtained his M.F.A. from the Royal College of Art, London in 1997. His work has been exhibited at LAXART, James Fuentes, Vielmetter Los Angeles, de boer Gallery, Timothy Hawkinson Gallery, Honor Fraser, Praz-Delavallade Paris and Los Angeles; White Columns, New York; PARTICIPANT INC, New York; EFA Gallery, New York; OfficeOps, Brooklyn; Vox Populi, Philadelphia, PA; and Peloton, Sydney, Australia. Levenson has expanded on the story of SKZ through performative drawing lessons taken from the school’s curriculum at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, American Jewish University, Los Angeles, USC’s Roski School of Art, and the Saas-Fee Summer Institute in Berlin, Germany. He is the recipient of a Pollock/Krasner grant and Yaddo and MacDowell Fellowships, among other awards. He is currently based in Los Angeles.
Exhibited Works
