Dan Walsh is a painter based in New York.

He studied at the Philadelphia College of Art in Pennsylvania and Hunter College

Hunter College

Hunter College, established in 1870, is a public university and one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hunter grants undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in more than one hundred fields of study, and is recognized...

 in New York.

A veteran of nearly thirty solo exhibitions Walsh’s work has been shown internationally at galleries and museums including PS1 Contemporary Art Center http://www.ps1.org, Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain http://www.mamco.ch/ in Geneva, the Indianapolis Museum of Art

Indianapolis Museum of Art

The Indianapolis Museum of Art is an encyclopedic art museum located in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. The museum, which underwent a $74 million expansion in 2005, is located on a campus on the near northwest area outside downtown Indianapolis, northwest of Crown Hill Cemetery.The...

 http://www.ima-art.org/, and The Royal Academy http://www.royalacademy.org.uk in London. He is represented by Paula Cooper http://www.artnet.com/gallery/264/paula-cooper-gallery.html in New York and Paolo Curti http://www.paolocurti.com/ in Milan.

Dan Walsh’s large-scale paintings draw from the tradition of Minimalism

Minimalism

Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...

. Rendered by hand, Walsh’s geometric compositions waiver with faint imperfection. Seemingly straight edges subtly bow and warp with undulating movement, creating tessellated fields of disorientation. Reminiscent of Ad Reinhardt

Ad Reinhardt

Adolph Frederick Reinhardt was an Abstract painter active in New York beginning in the 1930s and continuing through the 1960s. He was a member of the American Abstract Artists and was a part of the movement centered around the Betty Parsons Gallery that became known as Abstract Expressionism...

’s subliminal plaids or Sol LeWitt

Sol LeWitt

Solomon "Sol" LeWitt was an American artist linked to various movements, including Conceptual art and Minimalism....

’s optical illusions, Walsh uses the multiplicity of ordered form to draft algorithmic blueprints. Through repetition, Walsh’s work suggests endless expansion, fluctuating between the intimate and infinite. Walsh uses perspectival deception to make his flat surfaces appear to advance and recede simultaneously, provoking alternating sensations of gravity and weightlessness.

Transgressing the Minimalist’s objective purity, Walsh’s paintings both envelop artistic tautology

Tautology (rhetoric)

Tautology is an unnecessary or unessential repetition of meaning, using different and dissimilar words that effectively say the same thing...

 and reflect the contemporary experience of virtual reality

Virtual reality

Virtual reality , also known as virtuality, is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds...

. His grid-like compositions give subliminal suggestions of computer or television screens. However, his painstaking technique and hand-draw lines prize personal negotiation over synthetic precision. Walsh’s combination of brightly coloured tones and delicate wonkiness gives his work an underlying sense of play.

Sources and reviews

• Roberta Smith, “Dan Walsh at Paula Cooper Gallery”, The New York Times
  The New York Times
  The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
  
  , April 7th 2000, p. 40
• Eleanor Hearthney, “Dan Walsh at Paula Cooper”, Art in America
  Art in America
  Art in America is an illustrated monthly, international magazine concentrating on the contemporary art world, including profiles of artists and genres, updates about art movements, show reviews and event schedules. It is designed for collectors, artists, dealers, art professionals and other...
  
  , September 1998, n. 9, p. 129
• Pepe Karmel, “Art in Review – Dan Walsh”, The New York Times
  The New York Times
  The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
  
  , January 13th 1995, p. 25

External links

• Dan Walsh - Paintings - The Saatchi Gallery
• http://www.paolocurti.com/walsh/walsh.htm - accessed online June 2, 2007
• http://www.thebrooklynrail.org/arts/april03/as-danwalsh.html - accessed online June 2, 2007