ART CITIES:Berlin-Dan Attoe

Dan Attoe’s images draw on the iconography of U.S.A. his works seem to question what is real and what is imagined, by being both sincere and ironic, and by operating along the often indeterminate boundaries between fiction, experience and dream. Working as a painter Attoe often accompanies his painted work with text and pencil drawings directly on the wall. Juxtaposing the illuminating glare of neon with phrases and drawings, these works elevate doodles and notes to humorous, poignant and sometimes perverse effect.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Peres Projects Archive

Dan Attoe presents a new body of works in his solo exhibition “Natural Selections” at Peres Projects in Berlin. In these works, we see the artist’s practice evolve as Attoe embraces a more rebellious and impressionistic painting style. The paintings capture the wild and chaotic topography of the Northwest coast of America, some of the imagery is culled from actual locations, others are a total fiction created instead from memory, impression, and a fusion of several environments the artist has traveled to over the years. Attoe said of his work, “The landscape can be enjoyed for its beauty, and the disparity between it and the figures, but it also exists in service to these contemporary people in funny or ordinary clothing saying everyday things about e-mails or engaging in interpersonal clumsiness”. Diminutive human figures look off over infinite expanses of water, drift through the forest or float on the tides, their small and detailed bodies juxtaposed by monumental trees, mountains, or shores. Yet they remain disconnected from their sublime surroundings, instead consumed by interpersonal tensions and anxieties about themselves, speaking lines to everyone and no one at all. It rather seems that these fragile subjects are but ghosts passing through the natural world that engulfs them, their presence and thoughts a fleeting moment. Even in the absence of people, the words ‘Free Time’ and ‘Free Money’ float up from the forest with the fog, two of our troubled currencies set against the mist.

Info: Peres Projects, Karl-Marx-Alle 82, Berlin, Duration: 16/12/16-24/2/17, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 11:00-18:00, http://peresprojects.com