Beschreibung:

3 Dan Colen Die by the Sword 2013 flowers on bleached Belgian linen 149 x 322.2 cm (58 5/8 x 126 7/8 in.)
Provenance Gagosian Gallery, London Exhibited Edinburgh, Royal Botanic Garden, Inverleith House, Dan Colen: The Illusion of Life, 12 October - 24 November 2013 Catalogue Essay The brilliantly chromatic Die by the Sword (2013) marks the apex of the artist’s personal and spiritual transformation from l'enfant terrible to master painter of the twenty-first century. Differentiating itself from the rest of Colen’s work by colour saturation alone, the many fragile flowers spread across its surface echo Colen’s own testimony about his new direction and purpose in painting. Spanning more than ten feet wide, Colen’s work springs forth not only in its breathtaking chromatic variation, but also in the loving tactility of its medium. Colen’s unfamiliarity with the medium was itself a test of himself as a technician, allowing the flowers themselves to produce their own shape after their application without being crushed by the violent pressure of his hands. Dyed in a variety of colours, Colen’s flowers create a sea of beauty, one where the smooth transition from hue to hue almost makes for an iridescent surface, where multiple chromatic layers give an impression of immense depth. Starting at the far left of the picture, Colen’s deep purple hues above interact with a background of bright crimson and pink upon his bleached Belgian linen palette. Below, violet shifts to blue, finding elements of both burnt orange and unexpected pangs of yellow along the way. Both above and below, the intensity of the deeper colours fades away into a more delicate mixture of chromatic harmony as we travel toward the right side of the picture. As we arrive towards the centre of the spanning canvas, suddenly Colen’s surface bursts forth with brightness, saturated with electric yellow flowers sitting atop a fiery bed of various warm colours. As intense as it is transfixing, the centre of Colen’s picture is a visual feast, inviting the observer to look closer at Colen’s creation, just to be sure he hasn’t surreptitiously added a layer of bright paint to trick us. But Colen’s flowers are alone in their magnificence, burning brightly as we move below and to the right. Having exhausted their conflagration, the sea of flowers is once again calm at the far right of the picture, dipping back into the former shades of purple and azure that we came to admire so greatly on the left. Die by the Sword, an unequivocally gorgeous work by Dan Colen, demonstrates the span of this artist’s emotional reach; though Colen burst onto the scene a mere ten years ago, wreaking havoc in New York’s social scene and befriending a new generation of les enfants terribles that included Ryan McGinley and the late Dash Snow he has already crossed through many phases of a distinguished career, publicly mapping his personal progression from party animal provocateur to controlled creator. It is as if Colen has lived three decades in the span of one, acquiring and translating his wisdom onto a series of canvases using a variety of mediums in collage format. Here, in Die by the Sword, Colen embarks upon a project as bright in joy as it is neck-deep in mortal meditation; a canvas unlike any other. Die by the Sword, was first shown at the Edinburgh Royal Botanic Garden in Colen’s 2013 show Dan Colen: The Illusion of Life. Colen sat down with Steven Cox to discuss his show in personal, even intimate terms, illuminating the wide variety of mediums he chose to work with in his paintings. Perhaps one of the most fascinating aspects of the show are the titles of the works themselves, employing clichés and intentionally dissatisfying phraseology to provide a portrait of life, where satisfaction is an often elusive spectre. Colen himself testifies: ‘In terms of the titles, I think of them as autobiographical for sure. Cliché can be used just for comedy, but you can exploit real potential in a cliché if you have an active and sincere relationship to it. So maybe, juxtaposed with the content of the paintings