Tanya Bonakdar Gallery is pleased to present Dana Powell's first solo exhibition with the gallery, on view from June 6 through July 26, 2019 in New York. Titled Burner, this exhibition presents the delights, tragedies, and minor mysteries of the everyday. Powell's small oil paintings capture ordinary moments in time. Playfully integrating seemingly unrelated objects and landscapes, these compositions provoke far beyond their simplicity and demonstrate the unsettling power of mundane or innocuous subjects.
In creating this new body of work, Powell drew inspiration from recollections of summer activities at once wholesome and mischievous - illegal fireworks, drunken boat rides, and night drives on thrillingly winding roads. Based on the concept of a "moral minimum", a basic ethical rule that one should cause no intentional harm, these paintings stem from a paradox of illicit behavior with good intentions. At times bleak, like the lonely and neglected horse paddock reflecting in a car's high beams in Grange, and sometimes joyous, like the clear bright glow of a firework's perfect form in Sparks, these works are neither somber nor exuberant, but quietly perplexing and ominous.
Born in 1989 in Milwaukee, WI, Dana Powell lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. The artist graduated with a BFA from Cooper Union in 2015 and completed a residency at the Still House Group in 2016. In 2019, Powell's works were included in The Lure of the Dark, curated by Susan Cross, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA.

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