DAN LANE INTHE EMPTY SPACES
Internationally collected contemporary artist Dan Lane presents In The Empty Spaces ; a collection that questions the nuances associated with empty spaces; are they actually empty, or do they hold real substance as a foil to the elements that sit adjacent to them? Do they serve as shadows to cast light on the intended recipients of our attention? This body of work explores that very concept, as we see the artist embrace a fresh stylistic concept. Bold colours sing from these new works, in a marked departure fromDan’s previously favoured palette of gun metal and subdued, natural hues. This colour spectrum is unabashedly light and bright, and highlights Dan’s recent research into colour theory. Much of this new direction can be attributed to Dan’s personal experience during lockdown – in addition to feeling instinctively that he needed to create pieces that radiated life and vibrancy, he was also heavily influenced by the swathes of street art he discovered during his daily walks with his wife. Graffiti, by its nature, claims the unclaimed. Its transformative qualities breathe new life into formerly empty spaces, a trait that Dan felt particularly keenly when he first visited the famous Leake St Arches underneath London’s Waterloo station. Here the city’s longest graffiti wall is a dedicated space that has made its name as a democratic cultural venue for street art. Dan recalls the feeling of viewing street art as a sum of its parts for the first time: “The build-up of layers struck me. Some graffiti artists will do a whole mural, but then you also notice everyone’s put their little tag on there or something, and you get that accumulation of slightly different styles. When you take the time to look, you realise they look cool because it’s not contrived - the second or third artists put their take on it without really taking into consideration the original creator’s colours or designs; they just do their own thing. The end result is walls that look cool because they’re so random, and that inspired the look I was going for with this collection.” Enthused by the scope that this approach would lend to his artwork, Dan embarked upon a period of research into street art and mural artists, eventually discovering PichiAvo. Based in Valencia, Spain, this artistic duo specialise in ‘creating connections between painting and sculpture in urban settings’ – a mode that chimed resoundingly with Dan’s own style, as did their works that combined the classical with the contemporary.
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