Memory
Daniel Bodner’s latest paintings deepen his exploration of the relationship between painting and photography and their respective means of depicting light. In his shift to images that he generates unconsciously, he depicts scenes that are not real spaces but instead ones that emerge from memory or dreams. Like both old photographs and our memories, they seem degraded by time, neglect, and the limits of what can be recalled.
Now, as digital photography replaces the analog photographic process, its invisible, instantaneous mechanism erases the drama of an image taking shape, as well as its potential for error. Bodner probes the simultaneous creation and destruction of images that can occur in the analog photographic process, with its trickiness of over and under exposure, unintended chemical reactions, and the physicality of its technology.
By moving from scenes drawn from the world around us to an unconscious approach to creating images, Bodner depicts that drama, as if the paintings are literally developing as we look at them, with both creation and destruction happening at once.
Daniel Bodner began painting in New York in the mid-1980s with a focus on the human figure, exploring space in relation to the figure, creating images from an interior dialogue. In 2005 his focus shifted to the depiction of light as it describes or sometimes obliterates space and figures. His paintings recall decaying photographs with surface textures that reference mold and oxidization — qualities that are visual metaphors for the human experience and themes of solitude, memory and desire.
Following his graduation from the University of Wisconsin, Bodner pursued advanced studies in New York City. His paintings of New York streetscapes have been featured in leading galleries of Berlin, Cologne, Chicago, New York, and Amsterdam, and elsewhere. In 2012, the Stedelijk Museum Kampen featured his work in a significant retrospective exhibition, which included publication of his catalogue A Third Space 1993-2011.
Daniel Bodner (*1963) lives and works in Amsterdam (NL)
