Danny McDonald
The Beads & Other Objects
27 Apr - 11 Jun 2017
Danny McDonald, born in 1971 in Los Angeles, became known as a member of the legendary Art Club 2000, an artists’ collective founded in 1992 by the no less historic New York gallery owner Colin de Land and which included seven students from The Cooper Union School of Arts. As part of their work, which included photographs, installations, texts, and performances, the group investigated phenomena such as the gentrification of the urban context, the strategies of the art market, and the psychology of the fashion industry. In the process, their concepts and productions manifested a fundamental interest in institutional critique, not least as a reaction to the living and working conditions of their generation.
The artistic work that McDonald is developing, detached from his activities as a member of the Art Club 2000, is shaped by the experiences he gathered during the 1990s, whereby his current work not only has a different appearance, but also describes a new dimension. McDonald’s practice encompasses in particular sculptures and films that complement and stimulate each other, and which are characterized by a great sovereignty in the contemporary art context. For his haptically tangible works, he mainly uses toy figures, but occasionally also other everyday objects, which he combines according to the principles of the assemblage technique in such a way that new contexts of meaning and unprecedented narratives emerge. The bizarre and scurrile that is often inherent in the arrangements due to the contradictory nature of the objects used can be regarded as one of the specific characteristics of the artist’s sculptures. They reflect the artist’s endeavour to use his keen wit and humour to create a distorting mirror of social and socio-political situations. McDonald’s cinematic works, which generally have a strong visual as well as auditory power, point in a similar direction. For these works, the artist makes use of various alter egos, which appear as protagonists of the films and lead through surreal-looking narratives.
The exhibition The Beads & Other Objects, which is being held at the Kölnischer Kunstverein on the occasion of ArtCologne 2017, is the first solo presentation of Danny McDonald in a European institution.
The artistic work that McDonald is developing, detached from his activities as a member of the Art Club 2000, is shaped by the experiences he gathered during the 1990s, whereby his current work not only has a different appearance, but also describes a new dimension. McDonald’s practice encompasses in particular sculptures and films that complement and stimulate each other, and which are characterized by a great sovereignty in the contemporary art context. For his haptically tangible works, he mainly uses toy figures, but occasionally also other everyday objects, which he combines according to the principles of the assemblage technique in such a way that new contexts of meaning and unprecedented narratives emerge. The bizarre and scurrile that is often inherent in the arrangements due to the contradictory nature of the objects used can be regarded as one of the specific characteristics of the artist’s sculptures. They reflect the artist’s endeavour to use his keen wit and humour to create a distorting mirror of social and socio-political situations. McDonald’s cinematic works, which generally have a strong visual as well as auditory power, point in a similar direction. For these works, the artist makes use of various alter egos, which appear as protagonists of the films and lead through surreal-looking narratives.
The exhibition The Beads & Other Objects, which is being held at the Kölnischer Kunstverein on the occasion of ArtCologne 2017, is the first solo presentation of Danny McDonald in a European institution.