Daniel Tierney

Daniel Tierney’s work ranges from paintings on canvas to small and large-scale drawings, photography, mixed-media sculpture, collage, and installation. Employing a method of image and object production driven by repetition, mutation and distortion, his work often conflates prior works through new media, reveling in a persistent emergence. The new paintings in The best laid plans are made in ruin continue this solipsistic relationship, offering a number of possibilities through which to enter and navigate the interstices of painting. As the title of the exhibition suggests, these paintings emerge from a site of ruins: the landscaped yard, the family den, golf courses, and exhibition halls. In this site, virtual space is broken down into painting, painting is broken down into sculpture, sculpture is broken down into photography, photography is broken down into jpeg, jpeg is built into image, image is built into architecture, and architecture is flattened back out to a screen. With a visual language rooted in film, video games, and haptic technology, Daniel Tierney’s free-wheeling and bold experiments with color, abstraction, line, and surface venture a highly localized relationship with pictorial space and the possibilities of painting’s future.

Contemplating this new body of work, Tierney says:

“The paintings surface, the color, the filth of it all. A brush so light it is made of air, full of gesture but less weight. I wanted to double jump my own taste, my own assumptions and expectations related to the studio—not as a refutation or counterpoint but as an attempt to make work that was totally unaware of its precedent. I am interested in the existence of simultaneous and multiple worlds and realities as an experience that often floats to the surface and is cultivated by the relentless exposure to time and space.”

The best made plans are laid in ruin

March 6 - April 3, 2010

Press Release