Galleries, Miami
Danny Fox
Mitre Delta
Bill BradyBill Brady Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of paintings and ceramic pots by Danny Fox. Entitled Mitre Delta, the exhibition explores painting as a medium of varied technique and application through which we may access and ruminate on memories that are not only hidden within the self but also buried deep within the collective unconscious. In this way, painting is constructed as an act which contains in it the potential for social and psychological healing. Created throughout 2013 – 2015, this body of work represents a snapshot in time, a moment during Fox's career...Perhaps even a diversion between distinct phases of figuration in Fox’s artistic evolution or trajectory. Despite being self-taught, Fox creates thoughtful compositions marked by a sophisticated palette. This is made evident by his experimentation with color relations-subtle pairings of highly saturated and muted shades. In taking on the task of figurative and representational painting during a period in which it was not necessarily fashionable, Fox lent himself a degree of potency through differentiation. In many ways, Fox contemplates paint in a classical sense. In reverting to still-life and landscape painting, Fox explores a way in which he can use contemporary dialogue through classical means. In returning to these forms, Fox disrupts the usual painterly evolution from realism to abstraction. His process illuminates a conversation within his own trajectory, a dissection of the whole history of painting via subversions of the usual historical narrative or lineage. The image of the pot within many of these still-lives is made not from imagination, but rather from observation. Fox’s use of symbolic imagery creates both contrast and conflation between the ancient and the modern, between classical and contemporary. His basic ceramic structures are imbued with the very form that made them. The traditional elements of these pots are adorned with symbols; flat faces, fish, and trees create a vague narrative that is both ancient and timeless. The creation of these pieces, the allusion to what they may contain, as well as the paint that adorns them all refer to beginnings, origins, geneses. Fox has said that these works contain, “memories from childhood...buried so deep that they have no structure, no real form”. This recognition implies an aware implementation of the subconscious or unconscious. In relating this to his broader use of the collective unconscious, one is confounded with notions of nativism. Are we born with innate, ancient knowledge? Do our personal, private experiences deliver us to this knowledge? Fox’s works are riddled with philosophical questions of time, place, knowing and unknowing. Danny Fox (b.1986 in St. Ives, Cornwall) currently lives and works in Los Angeles and London. Fox has exhibited individually at institutions such as The Redfern Gallery, London; V1 Gallery, Copenhagen and S|2 Sotheby’s Los Angeles as well as S|2 Sotheby’s New York. He has also shown in group exhibitions at galleries including Sade Gallery, Los Angeles; Saatchi Gallery, London, and Newlyn Art Gallery, UK. His work has been reviewed in such periodicals as Tate Magazine, Purple Magazine, and Wall Street International.