Dan Flanagan, Lovo, 2022, oil, acrylic, and spray paint on canvas, 84 x 72 inches

Dan Flanagan
Ash of a Flame That Burns Well

April 9 — May 7, 2022
Opens Saturday, April 9, 6–8pm

Harper’s Los Angeles
8115 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90046
Tuesday–Saturday, 10am–6pm

Harper’s is pleased to present Ash of a Flame That Burns Well, the gallery’s second solo exhibition with Brooklyn-based artist Dan Flanagan. In his most recent paintings, Flanagan continues to chart new pathways in his intuitive, experimental, process-based manner of making, with bold linework and palpably physical, gestural marks—permutations of an enduring zeal for drawing. In their range of scale and applications, the works crackle with chromatic radiance or simmer softly with compositional subtleties. The exhibition opens on Saturday, April 9, 6–8pm, at the gallery's Los Angeles location, with a reception attended by the artist.

Flanagan lays down marks and colors with everything at his disposal—brushes, knives, tubes, pastels, spray paint, markers, pencils, crayons, pens—his surfaces physically thickened and visually enriched with additional underpainting, subtractive gestures, and elements of collage, as well as dimensionally swollen with low-relief swaths of polyurethane foams. These latter components, sprayed around in irregular rope-like lines that occasionally clump up, are then painted over and carved into, registering as somewhat venous, like throbbing cardiovascular networks pumping paint around canvases. Where these more complicated surfaces are catalyzed by particularly electric palettes and robustly dynamic compositions—as in Pulsa, Godra, and Palis—the paintings seem to register higher temperatures, exude heat, emit energy, buzz with electrostatic charge. Other works like Valis, Gopil, and Roman run somewhat cooler, concealing their chromatic force, verged upon brilliance, or calmed to a chill. Some works are raucous and turbulent, while others merely tremble, murmur, whir. 

Throughout Flanagan’s works, figurations commingle, entangle, unravel, and assert themselves in various ways. The artist likens these to unique characters whose names are indicated by the titles. These characters, whether partially obscured or conspicuously present, are like formal agents tasked with consummating spectrums, making surface tensions manifest, channeling forces, conveying relative warmth. Were they to breach their surfaces and burst out into rooms, one wonders if they might laugh, cry, or roar.

Churning, roiling, and effulgent, Dan Flanagan’s unabashedly abstract, variably tempered paintings in Ash of a Flame That Burns Well evidence the artist working in exciting new ways. Viewers will find the works exhilarating, rousing, meditative, and engrossing. Expanding and enlivening his creative output on various levels, materially and metaphorically alike, Flanagan brings the heat without losing his cool.

Written by Paul D’Agostino

Dan Flanagan (b. 1983, Madison, WI) studied at the New York Studio School prior to receiving a BFA from Kansas City Art Institute in 2008. Most recently, his work has been exhibited at Harper’s, New York and Los Angeles (2021); EXPO Chicago, online (2021); Mulherin Toronto, Canada (2019); BBQLA, Los Angeles (2019 and 2017); and Marvin Gardens, Ridgewood, NY (2018). Flanagan is represented by Harpers; he currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

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Dan Flanagan, Man, 2022, oil, acrylic, and spray paint on canvas, 84 x 72 inches

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