Art Insider: Daniel Dove

At Philip Martin Gallery, Daniel Dove’s paintings feel both old and new. An Eames chair or Brancusi sculpture would not feel out of place in these painted environments, yet the scenes depicted feel like traumatic aftermaths in some imagined augmented reality. For instance, in “Under Construction,” an abstract sculptural figure, which I can’t quite place  — is it a Henry Moore sculpture? Alexander Calder? — lays in repose under lush foliage. Yet, the scene is darkened, and cloistered in by barricades, and the figure has been marred by graffiti with a large “X” drawn on her face. In an interview on the gallery’s website, Dove describes this unsettled feeling as a depiction of “the state of the world after order has broken down.” To increase the uncanniness of these works, the artist pulls from real sculptures and places — those that have been lodged in the folds of my brain from some distant art history course — and blends them with fictional scenes of the artist’s own invention. He explains that the paintings “have this authority of reality to them, but at the same time they aren’t direct records of anything that ever existed.”

November 3, 2020