Monumental at UTSA Satellite Space and New Website

I'm in a group show titled Monumental that opened last night at UTSA Satellite Space in San Antonio. The show features 8 artists all who came out of the BFA program at Texas State University and all of the work is large. It's an honor to show with these other excellent artists and on top of that Monumental is the inaugural exhibition for the new gallery space in the Say Si building. Info for exhibition can be found here. The link only mentions the opening that was on the 3rd. There's also an exhibition on October 4th from 6-9pm for First Fridays in San Antonio.

In other news my new website is almost ready to go and any day now danielbernardgray.com will no longer go to this blogspot location. If you're reading this now be sure to check back in a few days to see the new site. Here's a few images of my work in Monumental:

In Defense of the Freedom That Is Our Birthright

on three panels displayed at 90 x 140 inches.

If We Do Not Want to Die Together in War We Must Learn to Live Together in Peace

85 x 42 x 16 inches

Enduring Freedom

Enduring Freedom, 2013

Concrete without rebar, heat resistant paint, concrete stain, sand and cinder blocks

You Will Never See This Coming

This is the video that was part of my December 2012 exhibition at Zosima Gallery. Both the show and the video were titled You Will Never See This Coming. Here is a link to the video on YouTube:

You Will Never See This Coming

Currently the video is part of a group show titled Mind Into Matter at the Gallery of the Common Experience at Texas State University. The following text accompanies the video in the gallery:

In August of 2011, I found out that I had a tumor in my right-fourth rib. Three long and uncertain months followed before the diagnosis arrived: it was benign. I had dodged a bullet. (For those interested, it was a non-sessile osteochondroma). During this time, much of my art was becoming increasingly inward in focus, which was unusual since I prefer to address issues that exist outside of myself. I made paintings that depicted what the tumor might look like. Some of them were accurate reproductions of tumors from medical texts; others were grotesque imaginations of the “corrosive lesion” that I had been told was inside of me.

After the diagnosis came in, I found that my attention was returning to the outward, and I was much less interested in my own medical and emotional state. However, I did not want to abandon these expressive paintings. I needed to find a way to bridge these two different modes of thought — the inward and the outward.

Looking over my research from that period of limbo, when I was considering the very real possibility that I had cancer, I was struck by two phrases that kept showing up over and over again: the War on Cancer and the War on Terror.

Cancer must be attacked aggressively and with the full onslaught of everything that is available. Terrorism is a cancer that must be cut out and destroyed.

I decided to continue the series by creating a body of work that dealt with the problems that arise when the two terms are used as analogues for each other. But 20 paintings into the series, they were obviously split between the War on Cancer and the War on Terror, and the two halves were not coalescing.

Several months later, after I had surgery to remove the tumor (along with 3 inches of rib), I devised the solution of literally intermingling these two different wars in one video. I appropriated footage from various sources, including Wikileaks, the U.S. military and medical websites. I also included videos that I took in my hospital room while recovering from the surgery. The final video bridges the gap between the War on Terror paintings and the War on Cancer paintings, uniting them visually and metaphorically.

New Work - Paintings

With the exception of the first image, these are all new paintings:

New Work - Photography

It's been a while since I've posted anything to the blog, my apologies! In fact this blog is soon on its way out, to be replaced by a real, non-blog website. That website is currently under construction - we hope to break the champagne bottle over it in the next month or two. But in the meantime...new work:

 

Untitled Horizon Line, 1

Digital Photograph

Untitled Horizon Line,2

Digital Photograph

Untitled Horizon Line,3

Digital Photograph

 

Untitled Horizon Line, 4

Digital Photograph

 

Untitled Horizon Line, 5

Digital Photograph

Leviathan

And a top view:

 

Leviathan, 2012, Copper hydroxide, latex, sand and carbon on panel. 15 x 9 x 4 inches.

 

Artist Statement

Artist Statement

Stripped to its skeleton, my work is about the difference between truth and reality. I think of reality as everything that exists, with or without human observation. I think of truth as the ways humans interpret reality.

The flesh of my work — what I address directly — is how truth and reality relate to human conflict. People naturally, it seems, want their own definitions of truth to be universally accepted as the definitions of reality. These competing definitions — all equivalent insofar as they are interpretations of reality — are the origins of human conflict. From bullying to hegemony to conquest to genocide, humans hurt and destroy each other to gain dominion for their own truth.

Materials used in my work represent both reality and interpretation: natural materials like earth, minerals, water and vegetation are the basic elements of the physical world, created without the aid or craft of people; man-made materials like paint, glue, fertilizer, metal, video and recorded sound represent our crafting and reshaping of reality. I want my work to both mimic reality — the untouched lithosphere, biosphere and atmosphere — and convey the liminal realm of truth — ambiguous, debatable and subject to manipulation.

More images from my BFA Thesis Exhibition

Here are some more images from my BFA Thesis Exhibition. Photos are courtesy of Christina Shook Murrey and Tino Mauricio.

The first shot is an overview of the whole installation; the two videos, which were made in collaboration with Billi London-Gray, the large painting on the wall and the sculpture on the floor. The top video is titled To Prohibit Strife and the bottom video is With Sure Clear Knowledge of What Happened. More about the videos to come later. But in the meantime, here's a link to the trailer for With Sure Clear Knowledge:

http://youtu.be/p1ckZbFMLpc

Daniel Bernard Gray
The Walls Had Doors and the Doors Were Open to Anyone With the Will and the Heart to Get Here, 2012
Alkyd enamel, Ironite fertilizer, Greensand fertilizer, diatomaceous earth, pollen, gunpowder, asphalt, cement, lacquer, silt, saltpeter, sulfur, eastern red cedar and cacti skeleton on panel and canvas, 78 x 126 x 10 inches

For those of you who don't know your inches that's 6.5 x 10.5 ft. And for those of you don't know inches or feet it's 198 x 320 x 25 cm. 

Sculpture with painting in the background. The object on the panel opposite the creosote bush is the skeleton (actual term) of a prickly pear cactus. I collected it from a friends property in Marfa, TX. Marfa had a really hard freeze a year and a half ago that killed lots of cacti. In this example, the whole plant died, all at once from the freeze. The dry conditions of the desert left the skeleton of the plant perfectly in tact.

Daniel Bernard Gray

As a City Upon a Hill, 2012

Silt, cement, creosote bush and cacti skeleton on two panels

48 x 66 x 48 inches (122 x 168 x 122 cm)

The creosote bush emits a chemical out of its roots that kills or suppresses the growth of other plants, thus allowing it to keep all of the available resources to itself. I find this behavior to be powerfully symbolic.

Why is it set inside of a cement block? I believe that the cement links the bush to humanity in a way that wouldn't happen if the bush was simply placed on the horizontal surface. Humans make cement. Humans make things out of cement. The symbolic significance of the plant is thus linked to humanity.

Separate and Join Together - BFA Thesis Exhibition

If I was more on top of things I would have posted this a week ago or more. My BFA Thesis Exhibition came and went this past week. It went real well and I thought the exhibition was full of lots of great work from 16 different artists. I had a large painting, a sculpture and two videos that I made in collaboration with Billi London-Gray. Here's some pictures and I promise to get more images up soon.

This is after setting up last week on May 6th. That was a long day.

At the reception on May 10th, with Billi London-Gray and our friend and artist Tal Hollingsworth.

In front of our two videos at the reception. We might be posing just a little bit

Digital Stuff

In the next few months I'll be launching my website, however I'll still be keeping this blog. The blog will be more informal. So works in progress, oddballs, etc; basically things that don't quite fit on my professionally geared website. For example, something like this post. Here's a couple things I did in Illustrator and Photoshop. Quite different from the rest of my work, but something that interests me.

The two images are made of text that reads:

Get out the chloroform and get out a rag
Get out the chloroform and get out a rag
What there is no chloroform then get another strap

Unknown Corrosive

Inherited Collapse

There Is Still Much Love In Mankind

Untitled

Untitled

Untitled

Deprivation

Before All and For All

An Act of Brotherly Communion

Mohamed Bouazizi