Untitled Document

Adam Baumgold Gallery presents the exhibition “The Living Room” by Anton van Dalen, from May 7 through June 12. The exhibition will include drawings, paintings, collages, cut-outs and constructions. Spanning twenty-three years, many of these works, such as the collages, have not been publicly exhibited before. The varied groups of works are continually revised, refined and revisited over many years. With a crisp, clear, graphic vocabulary and style, van Dalen continues to examine his long-standing aesthetic and social concerns for the subjects of nature, man-made objects, home, street, daily life, memory, and their tenuous relationship to each other.

In van Dalen’s statement for the exhibition the artist states, “’The Living Room’ evolved out of a twelve year consideration as to how to readdress the purpose, means, and use of art in my personal and public life. In Holland, the land and culture of my birth, the living room has long been at the center of life, affirming home, family, and human relationships through intimacy. Dutch artists from Johannes Vermeer and his contemporaries to Vincent van Gogh - as in “The Potato-Eaters” - used the living room to reveal the power of humanity within the ceremonial. With the setting of ‘The Living Room,’ I construct an intimate and decorative framework to juxtapose the diverse aspects of my art, and to reflect on the complexities of contemporary life. Included are drawings, watercolors, paintings, cut-outs, collages and constructions, with a spectrum of subjects touching on the divided worlds of nature and man-made objects, home and street, daily life and memory, etc. Centered on “The Living Room” is the “Migratory Path Box,” with its symbolic building blocks, where gallery visitors are invited to seat themselves and lay out their own paths.”

This is Anton van Dalen’s first solo exhibition since 1996 when he had the exhibition “Birds and Cars” at the gallery. Van Dalen had a retrospective exhibition “The Memory Cabinet,” at Exit Art in 1988. His one-man performance “Avenue A Cut-Out Theatre” based on personal experiences has been shown at The Drawing Center and since 1995 has travelled throughout the U.S.A. and Europe, recently at The New York Historical Society where he was included in the exhibition “Petropolis.” He has executed public art projects for the MTA, the NYC Board of Education and City College. His work is included in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art, among others.