Dane Mitchell
dal 23/10/2009 al 27/11/2009
Segnalato da
23/10/2009
Dane Mitchell
Daad Galerie, Berlin
Minor Optics. Artist's investigations are primarily concerned with the marginal phenomena and transitions that largely escape ordinary (visual) perception. Using the methods of scientific logic and experimental demonstrability, Mitchell leaves clues to these marginal areas and invents forms for making them visible and displaying them. The exhibition consists of two new works both of which, in different ways, refer reflexively to the art space.
The "dematerialization of the art object" (Lucy Lippard), which has been of eminent aesthetic importance at
least since the 1960s, occurs in a new way in the work of Dane Mitchell. The artist from New Zealand is
not so much concerned, as many of the conceptual artists of the first generation were, with a rigorous
rejection of the commodity character of the work as he is with a general search for the essence of art as
such. Mitchell’s investigations are primarily concerned with the marginal phenomena and transitions that
largely escape ordinary (visual) perception. Using the methods of scientific logic and experimental
demonstrability, Mitchell leaves clues to these marginal areas and invents forms for making them visible
and displaying them.
The exhibition Minor Optics at the daadgalerie consists of two new works by Dane Mitchell, both of which,
in different ways, refer reflexively to the art space. Several electrostatically charged metal plates placed in
the gallery space accumulate over the course of the exhibition dust particles, which can be seen on the
glossy surfaces of the plates. In the study of the environment of art and the art space, dust represents all
the things, organic and inorganic, that can occur, since almost nothing is free of dust.
Working with the perfume maker Michel Roudnitska, Dane Mitchell developed a synthetic scent that
corresponds closely to the smell of an empty exhibition space. Mitchell is trying to analyze the difficult-to-
describe world of smells and thus provide information about what was previously unnamable or invisible.
On the one hand, the exhibition Minor Optics draws attention to the spaces in which art is stored and
presented and their conventional effects—very much in the spirit of a critique of institutional "customs and
pathologies." At the same time, in light of the exhibition’s title and with Deleuze and Guatarri’s concept of
minor literature in mind, it introduces a tendency to deterritorialization that blurs boundaries and expands
the limits of perception.
Dane Mitchell, born in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1974, is a guest of the Berliner Künstlerprogramm/DAAD
in 2009.
He studied at the Auckland Institute of Technology and has received scholarships and been artist-in-
residence in London, the United States, and Australia. Since 2004 Dane Mitchell has participated in
numerous international group and solo exhibitions in New Zealand, Australia, and the United States. His
most recent solo presentation in Europe was part of Statements at Art Basel in 2008. In September 2009
he received the Waikato National Contemporary Art Award in 2009 for his work Collateral. The artist lives
and works in Auckland, New Zealand, and Berlin.
Image: Minor Optics, 2009 (detail) © & Courtesy the artist
For further information and images, please contact:
artpress – Ute Weingarten Phone: +49 (0)30 2196 1843 artpress@uteweingarten.de
Opening: Saturday, 24 October von 7 – 9 pm
Daad Galerie
Zimmerstrasse 90 / 91 - 10117 Berlin
Mon – Sat 11 am – 6 pm