Dan Linden

My year spent in Vienna has had a tremendous impact upon my practice. Reading and exploring its history in the context of my own Jewish heritage has provided a wealth of narratives that are still nourishing my work.
As opposed to any overt narrative, my work seeks to create a visual tension, a suggestion or invocation of something that has just occurred or of an impending danger. My work often features spaces within spaces: paintings, doorways, screens and reflections that hint at new spaces without fully depicting them, creating tension from a broken narrative. Curious floating forms look displaced creating a visual kink that transcends what at first might appear to be a polite drawing room ambience.
Another aspect of my work involves the appropriation or quotation from art historical references. I am interested in the way history and art history run alongside each other. By extracting painting ideologies and re-introducing them into a new context they can take on new meanings and associations.
My paintings seek to question both the act of painting and its possibilities now, as well as asking the viewer to think about a moment in history with a very long shadow.

BA (hons) Fine Art, Newcastle University