May 17th - June 14th
Exhibition Reception: Saturday, May 17th, 5-7pm
Exhibition Reception: Saturday, May 17th, 5-7pm
Teasing out the particulars of visual pleasure, spatial play, and material assertiveness, Dan Devening’s recent work has focused on motifs and strategies that address these concerns within tight parameters. In his paintings and works on paper, he strives to harmonize disparate painterly moves while maintaining a sense of tension and edginess. The discomfort that arises from the collision of strange elements helps make the work dynamic and mysterious.
As a visual standard, the rounded rectangle emerged when he began noticing its ubiquity in devices that connect us to the outside world. iPhones, televisions, and computer monitors employ the “friendliness” of this form to suggest comfort and simplicity—while effortlessly holding us captive. It’s that affability—the kindly invitation to use, peer into, and be mesmerized—that serves as a mirror to our culture and society. The shape’s darker, more sinister undertones also make it a rich point of departure for my work.
Primarily, the shape serves as a portal. As in much of his past work, the intersection of landscape, windows, and pictorial illusion continues to be a fundamental starting point. The question of how a painter acknowledges the materiality of painting while negotiating its potential to transport the viewer beyond the picture plane into imagined worlds is always present in his practice. At times, the rounded rectangle resembles an airplane window; at others, it hovers like an inflated bladder over a hidden landscape.
Dan Devening is an artist, educator, curator, gallerist and writer. He is currently Professor, Adj. at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was Senior Lecturer in the Department of Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University from 1993 to 2008.
His paintings, works on paper, and installations have been exhibited extensively, including recent shows in New York at Geary Contemporary, Launch F18, Apex Art, and Printed Matter, Inc.; in Chicago at 65Grand, LVL3, Heaven Gallery, Autumn Space, ebersmoore gallery, Roy Boyd Gallery, and Julius Caesar; and in Los Angeles at Kinkead Contemporary, among other national venues. His recent international projects include exhibitions in Germany at the Kunstmuseum Ahlen, Galerie Grölle in Wuppertal, Kunstverein Recklinghausen, the Museum Kurhaus in Kleve, dok25A in Düsseldorf, Renate Schroeder Gallery in Cologne, and galerie oqbo, Schau Fenster, Scotty Enterprises, and Neues Problem in Berlin. He has also exhibited work in Vienna, Austria; Brussels, Belgium; Tokyo, Japan; Toronto, Canada; Monterrey, Mexico; Melbourne, Australia; and Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Devening has curated exhibitions both nationally and internationally, including projects at galerie oqbo in Berlin, dok25A in Düsseldorf, Hagiwara Projects in Tokyo, the Hyde Park Art Center, and the Block Museum of Art in Chicago, among many others.
He recently completed the installation of a major public art commission for the CTA Irving Park Blue Line train station.
His essays have appeared in several recent publications, including Out of Place: Artists, Pedagogy and Purpose, edited by Zoë Charlton and Tim Doud; Clay Pop: What’s New in Clay, in a chapter on the work of Wade Tullier; and Where the Echo Drifts, an essay on the work of Leipzig artist Dagmar Varady, published in Expanded Studio by Snoek Publishing.
He has received grants, awards, and fellowships from the Ford Family Foundation in Portland, Oregon; the Brown Foundation in Houston, Texas; the Illinois Arts Council; the National Endowment for the Arts; and the MacArthur Foundation (International Connections), among others.
Devening founded and currently directs Devening Projects, a gallery featuring exhibitions by emerging and established contemporary artists. He is the former co-director of Paris, London, Hong Kong in Chicago.