Daniel Dove

Philip Martin Gallery is pleased to present its second solo exhibition of paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Daniel Dove. Dove's oil-on-canvas pieces present the often surreal paradoxes of modern life.

Daniel Dove's works depict figurative sculpture in tenuous relationships with a background or environment of lyrical shapes. In Dove's practice, shifts in painterly surface suggest tactility and volume against a resolute flatness of design. His color palette bathes abstraction in warm naturalistic light.

In several of his works, Daniel Dove take on known art-historical motifs, using them as a jumping off point for imagined compositions. The horse, for example, in the painting "Equus I" is plucked from the chaos of Picasso’s canonical masterpiece, “Guernica” (1937). In Dove's work, the equine form stands in isolation, on an empty expanse, underneath a luminous, Cubist-inflected sky.

Another Dove painting, "Grrrl with Guitar," rebuilds the original subject of another Picasso’s piece,“Girl with Mandolin” (1910). To do so, Dove adapts torquing sculptural planes. An almost-mystical light emanates from the figure's Courtney Love hair, conjuring 90s-era's “Riot Grrl” energy from an otherwise still and silent monument.

Several of the works in Dove's exhibition present ad-hoc constructions, standing in salt flats or arid planes. Many of these creaturely forms appear as if assembled from the detritus of consumer culture. Placed imagined compositions influenced equally by Modernist masterworks and desert- dwelling junk sculpture, they seem very much alive, forcing questions with regard to the world we live in, how we think about it, and the lenses through which we do so.

Daniel Dove (b. 1971, Austin, TX) received his BFA from the University of Texas at Austin (Austin, TX) and his MFA from Yale University (New Haven, CT). Daniel Dove’s work has recently been featured by David Zwirner Gallery on Platform. Daniel Dove’s work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions at Philip Martin Gallery (Los Angeles, CA); Frederick R. Weisman Museum (Malibu, CA); Orange County Great Park (Irvine, CA); Cleveland Institute of Art (Cleveland, OH); The Contemporary Austin (Austin, TX); and Jack Shainman Gallery (New York, NY). He has received grants from the Dallas Museum of Art and the Ohio Arts Council. Daniel Dove is the recipient of The William and Dorothy Yeck Award and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship. He has been featured in various publications such as “Artforum,” “Art in America,” “Los Angeles Times,” “The Village Voice,” “Harper’s Magazine,” “LA Weekly,” and “Tema Celeste.” Daniel Dove’s work is in the permanent collections of the Frederick R. Weisman Museum (Malibu, CA); Progressive Insurance (Cleveland, OH); and Hallmark Art Collection (Kansas City, MO). Daniel Dove is a full-time faculty member at California State University, Long Beach. Dove lives and works in San Pedro, CA.