Since the early 1990s, Dan Walsh has developed painted artworks that etch the fragility of movement in a modernist and geometric vein. His compositions are free hand paintings that transgress the objective purity of minimalism. His paintings forms, colors, and even the manner they’re hung, are often atmospheric in nature. Situated behind an arrangement of colored stones forming curved lines and round angles, his paintings produce a sensation of floating and a strange delicateness.
These six canvases shown here rely on the elementary form of the grid. It is the structural apparatus at the heart of this group of artworks. After all, painting is the medium that allows the mechanisms of expression and perception to play off one another. Through the abstraction and the simplification of forms, each painting corresponds to a certain resonance or a table of potential elements, similar to the Tibetan Mandalas: this allows the painting to snatch the spectator’s attention and influence his reflection. For Dan Walsh, painting is a pertinent medium, “as long as it is a means for an individual to make sense of the world, and the commitment it requires is shared with the public.” Therefore the painting is not simply a critical tool. Above all else, it symbolizes the place where we can explore and question mechanisms of perception.
