DAN WITZ
UP LATE
MAY 10 - JUNE 8

DFN Gallery is pleased to present "Up Late," an exhibition of new work by Dan Witz.  Witz's latest night paintings feature brightly lit urban storefronts, suburban houses, and individual lamps.  Each painting glows from its own private light source, which, rather than projecting a welcoming presence, keeps the viewer at an uneasy distance, effectively alienating the familiar and fostering a sense of disquiet.

A road trip to the town he grew up in resulted in Witz's "Home Sweet Home" series.  Depicted at dusk, these houses radiate warmth and security against the encroaching darkness, allowing the artist to explore the emotional weight of his journey from childhood in Middle America to his mature self as detached artist-observer.

The storefronts of Witz's "Up Late" series recall his earlier bodegas, their bright signage and oasis-like promise of comfort set in contrast to the empty shadows surrounding them.  As Meredith Lewis observes in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition, "The physical light emanating from Witz's paintings serves as a metaphor for sustenance and enlightenment, while the distance the artist places between that light and his viewer reminds us of our voyeurism and the extent to which we are always outside looking in."

Witz works from photographs taken on road trips.  He digitizes and transfers these images to canvas for use as his underpainting, before working over the surface with a variety of traditional techniques taken from the history of representational oil painting.  Witz's resulting hyperrealistic images capture their scenes in a way that neither painting nor photography could do on its own.

Dan Witz was born in Chicago in 1957.  He studied at Rhode Island School of Design, in Providence, and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, in Maine, before graduating from Cooper Union School of Art, in New York City, in 1980.  Witz has been a National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient, and has twice received fellowships from The New York Foundation for the Arts.

                                                                                  .

For more images, please click here.