Dan Witz “NY Hardcore”
Jonathan LeVine Gallery
This event has ended.
Jonathan LeVine Gallery presents NY Hardcore, recent works by Brooklyn-based artist Dan Witz in what will be his second solo exhibition at the gallery, accompanied by a printed catalog.
With a career spanning over thirty years, Dan Witz is known for his tromp l’oeil street interventions and extensive studio practice. Applying old master painting techniques in the manner of Bosch or Brueghel to his works on canvas, the artist depicts hyper-realistic figurative imagery in portraits, landscapes, and still lifes.
NY Hardcore includes works from Witz’s celebrated mosh pit series. His large-scale paintings portray throngs of punk youth while smaller works highlight cropped studies of single subjects within the crowd. Inspired by his experience in the early 80s, performing in post-punk noise bands during the downtown NY scene, the Mosh Pit series embodies Witz’s desire for comparable intensity and rebelliousness in his painting.
In the artist’s words, “When my brief career as a musician was waning to a close, I knew I’d really miss the intensity, but I discovered in museum wanderings—especially with the epic baroque multi-figure pieces—that painting actually had plenty of potential for the adrenalin and animal frenzy that I craved. The action (within them) can be dizzying, sometimes it even manages to achieve an almost punk-rock pitch of chaos and catharsis.” Regarding mosh pits, “After photographing and being tossed around in mosh pits…when I’d nail someone in full barbaric yawp, it was as satisfying as performing.”
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Dan Witz was born in 1957 in Chicago, Illinois and is currently based in Brooklyn, New York. He attended Rhode Island School of Design from 1975-77 and came to New York in 1978 to attend Cooper Union, receiving a BFA in 1980. In 1982, he received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1992 and 2000, he received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and in 1998 he received a fellowship from the Public Art Fund. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Witz has been featured in many publications including The Wall Street Journal, TIME Magazine, New York Magazine, The Huffington Post and ARTINFO. In 2010, Gingko Press released In Plain View, a monograph documenting 30 years of Witz’s career of works created in the studio and on the street.
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Schedule
from April 05, 2014 to May 03, 2014