NYAB Event - Daniel Domig “All Words Were Once Animals”

Daniel Domig “All Words Were Once Animals”

33 Orchard

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Jane Kim presents Daniel Domig All Words Were Once Animals as the first show to take place within the collaborative gallery space, 33 Orchard. Domig’s recent work engages with the darker, hidden aspects of human psychology through exploration of the corporeal form and simultaneously testing both the limitations and potential of painting.

The artist involves art movements of the past in a discussion, pushing the conversation forward by questioning their historical focuses. His is a commentary on representation in the physical landscape and on the individual experience of this external environment. There is less ease in scrutinizing the internal, as it requires working against our own psychological mechanisms. Domig’s attempt via painting shows his resoluteness to dismantle those mechanisms of inhibition.

Daniel Domig’s modus operandi is reflected in his process. Both his imagery and composition are lucid and also completely unplanned, emerging entirely from his own mind. There are no photographic references or any pre-organization. He sincerely engages with himself to realize his intent to delve inward. Despite their lyricism, Domig’s large paintings recall gothic stained glass. Perhaps this should only be fitting for work born of a ritualized process and spiritual concept. While dark and unsettling, they are rich in color with subtle geometries and a central glow that could be likened to a 14th-century cathedral window in Vienna, where Domig’s practice is based.

The nine paintings, all oil on canvas, were made from 2011 to 2013. This show is Domig’s third in the United States. Born 1983 in Vancouver Canada, Daniel Domig spent his youth in Salzburg and attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Some of his past exhibitions include Haupt, 2012, Walserherbst, Austria; Tempted to Doubt, University of Applied Arts, Vienna, 2012; Fünf Räume (Five Rooms), Austrian Cultural Forum, New York, 2011; Till Human Voices Wake Us, WINIARZYK, Vienna, 2011; and solo presentations at Jane Kim/Thrust Projects, NYC in 2006 and 2008.