Dan Devine

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Biography:

Dan Devine is a contemporary artist whose sculpture, installations, drawings and photographs explore the relationship between interior and exterior spaces. His work investigates reversals of space to examine our relationship to technology and nature. As a former motocross racer, Devine combines a fascination for vehicles and machines parts with a reverence for the natural world. Notable projects include Dan Devine’s inside-out cars, sheep farm and concrete castings formed in the space between crashed vehicles. 

 

Dan Devine is Chair of the Sculpture Department at Hofstra University where he was also the Director of the Rosenberg Gallery for over twenty year. For over four decades, his work has been exhibited internationally in galleries and museums and has been reviewed in major publications. He lives and works in Columbia County, NY.

 

 

 

Résumé:

 

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2022                The Fifth Revolution, Thompson Giroux Gallery, Chatham, NY

2019                Impact, Thompson Giroux Gallery, Chatham, NY

2018                Dan Devine: Inside Out NASCAR, ICEHOUSE Project Space, Sharon, CT 

2014                Sheep Farm, The Fields Sculpture Park Art Omi, Ghent, NY.

2011                Dan Devine Inside OutArt in Buildings, Time Equities, New York, NY

2010                Dan Devine, Incident Report, Hudson, NY

2007                Sheep FarmThe Fields Sculpture Park, Ghent, NY

2006                Inside Out NASCARPierogi Gallery, Brooklyn, NY

2003                Dan DevineHofstra Museum, Hempstead, NY

2002                This Conversation May Be Recorded for Training Purposes, Pierogi, Brooklyn, NY

2001                Inside Out Snowman, Davis and Hall Gallery, Hudson, NY

1998                Inside Out CarPierogi, Brooklyn, NY

1993                The Secret of Las Meninas, Public Art Fund Commission, MetroTech Center, Brooklyn, NY

1992                Solid SpaceDooley Le Cappellaine Gallery, New York, NY

1991                Dan DevineZilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT

 

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2021                Winter Over? curated by George Spencer, Joyce Goldstein Gallery, Chatham, NY and TSL Hudson, Hudson, NY

                        Wall Power, Tanja Grunert Salon, Hudson, NY

2020                Space LAB, curated by Julie Torres and Ellen Letcher, Collarworks, Troy, NY 

2018                True NorthLABspace, Hillsdale, NY

2017                En Masse 2017Thompson Giroux Gallery, Chatham, NY

2016                Bedfellows, curated by Susan Jennings, LABspace, Hillsdale NY 

2015                Foodshed, curated by Amy LiptonCR10, Linlithgo, NY

2015                Nomad Gallery, Joyce Goldstein, Chatham, NY and Kenneth Young, Austerlitz, NY

2014                Search Portrait, Thompson Giroux Gallery, Chatham, NY

2012-13           Green AcresContemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH, American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Washington, D.C. and the Arlington Art Center, Arlington, VA

2006                Eat My DustSouth Eastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, NC

2004                Pierogi A Go-GoPierogi, Brooklyn, NY

2004                Working in BrooklynBrooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY

2001-03           Surrounding Interiors: Views Inside the Car, curated by Judith Hoos Fox, Davis Museum, Wellesley, MA NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, Fort Lauderdale, FL and Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, MN

2000                Five Sculptors, curated by Joe Amrhein, Long Island University, Brooklyn, NY

                        Mis-UnderstandingBegane Grond, Utrecht, Holland

2011                Opening ExhibitionThompson Giroux Gallery, Chatham, NY

2010                Bibliofilia, curated by K.K. Kozik, Hotchkiss Library of Sharon Connecticut.

2008                Dead Center, Dan Devine and Eugenio Dittborn, Western Exhibitions, Detroit, MI

2007                Red Badge of Courage, curated by Omar Lopez Chahoud, Newark, NJ 

2005                Modified,  The Arts Center, Troy, NY

2003                Sharjah Biennial 6Sharjah Biennial, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

                        Brooklyn ArtistsBernard Toale Gallery, Boston, Mass.

2001                Brooklyn 718, curated by Dominique Nahas and Michael Rush, Palm Beach Institute for Contemporary Art, Palm Beach, FL

1999                Fairy-Tales, curated by Denise Carvalho, Center for Metamedia, Plasy, Czech Republic     

1999                BrooklynNew WorkThe Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio

                        Dysfunctional Sculpture, Center Galleries, Detroit, Michigan

                        Rage For ArtPierogi, Brooklyn, NY

                        Permanent Resident, curated by Odili Odita part of Paradise 8Exit Art/The First World, New York, NY

                        Chocolate Kingdom, curated by Leslie Brack, The Work Space, New York, NY

                        HeavyRoebling Hall, Brooklyn, NY

                        Outer BoroughsWhite Columns, New York, NY

1997                Redefinition’s: A View From BrooklynMain Art Gallery, California State, Fullerton, CA

                        Current UndercurrentWorking in BrooklynBrooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY

                        Shadow Traffic curated by Suzanne Joelson, E.S. Van Dam Gallery, New York, NY

                        Road Show '97Bronwyn Keenan Gallery, New York, NY

                        Making Art HistoryAlbany Center Gallery at Ten Broeck Mansion, Albany, NY

1996                Brookworld, organized by Cindy Tower, condemned building, New York, NY

                        Body, Trace, Memory, Eighth Floor Gallery, New York, NY

                        Scratch: Benefit for Thread Waxing Space, organized by Mel Chin, New York, NY

                        Benefit for BLAST, BLASTNew York, NY

                        From the MAB LibraryAC projectroom, New York, NY

1994                A Life of Secrets, curated by Kim Jones, AC projectroom, New York, NY

                        Recollection, Tai Ming Moy, New York, NY

                        Site Seeing, Bardamu Gallery, New York, NY

                        Life/Boat, curated by Robert Mahoney, The Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn, NY

                        Sign Language, City Without Walls, Newark, NJ

                        Kirili, Devine, Silverthorne, Stockholder, WestGallerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, France

                        Devine, Kirili, Silverthorne,  Stux Gallery, New York, NY

1993                On the Road, Horodner/Romley Gallery, New York, NY

                        Underlay, curated by Paul Bloodgood and Gavin Brown, 5 Renwick St., New York, NY

                        Twisted State80 Washington St., New York, NY

                        Jours Tranquilles a ClichyPaolo Goyannes, Paris, France and New York, NY

1992                ValueDooley leCappelaine Gallery, New York, NY

1991                Abstract Information, curated by Ellen Handy, Sacred Heart University, Bridgeport, CT and Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY

                        Animation and Ornament, curated by Stephen Westfall, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY and SUNY Potsdam, Potsdam, NY

1990                Electrified Aura, curated by Robert C. Morgan Nahan Contemporary, New York, NY

1989                The Milky Way, curated by Stephen Westfall, Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

1988                John Davis Gallery, New York, NY

1987                Photomannerisms, curated by Klaus Ottmann, Lawrence Oliver Gallery,  Philadelphia, PA

                        Sub-Industrial Sculpture curated by Bill Arning, White Columns, New York, NY

                        Hyperspaces curated by Klaus Ottmann and Leslie Tonkonow, Art City, New York, NY

1986                Transformations curated by Stephen Westfall, Richard Green Gallery, New York, NY 

1985                Exhibition and LectureFour Walls, Hoboken, NJ

                        Invitational ExhibitionA.I.R., New York, NY

1984                Landscape Without Cow, collaboration with Stefan Roloff, Helen Shlien Gallery, Boston, MA

                        Urban Image/Countryside Views, The University Art Gallery, University of New Hampshire, Dunham, NH

                        Mural, Kamakazi, New York, NY

1983                Terminal New York, Brooklyn Army Terminal, Brooklyn, NY

                        Combinations, Gallery NAGA, Boston, MA

1981                New England ReliefDe Cordova Museum, Lincoln, MA

                        Four Photographers:  Views and Fragments, Helen Shllen Gallery,  Boston, MA

                        Photo CollageTreat Gallery, Bates College, Lewiston, Maine 

                        Fort Point Artists, Boston City Hall Gallery, Boston, MA

 

CURATORIAL PROJECTS and PUBLICATIONS

2008-19           Gallery DirectorRosenberg Gallery, Hofstra University, New York

2010                Settling Into Nature, Photographs by Mikael Levin. Hofstra Museum

1994-2005       Gallery DirectorRosenberg Gallery, Hofstra University, New York

2000                Chair, History of Art and ArchitectureTwentieth Congress, Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences, Washington, D.C. August, 2000

1999                Historical Misrepresentation at the Guggenheim-BMW, The Art of the Motorcycle Exhibition. Essay published in Art Criticism, volume 15, number 1, 1999.

1998                22/21 VisionHofstra Museum, Hempstead, NY

1995                Grounded, Art Omi Annual Outdoor Sculpture Invitational, Art Omi, Ghent, NY

                                                

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

2019                Maine, Stephen, Dan Devine’s Art of Destruction. Hyperallergic, 13 Apr. 2019

https://hyperallergic.com/494724/dan-devine-impact-thompson-giroux-gallery.

                        Farrell Okamura, Sara, What We Leave Behind. The Greylock Glass, 7 Apr. 2019

https://www.greylockglass.com/2019/04/07/dan-devine-what-we-leave-behind.

2012                Spaid, Sue. Green Acres: Artists Farming Fields, Greenhouses and Vacant Lots. Contemporary Arts Center, 2012, pp. 3, 7, 52, 109, 111, 164(illustration), 169.

                        Bua, Matt and Maximillian Goldfarb. Architectural Inventions: Visionary Drawings. Lawrence King Publishing, 2012, p. 192 (illustration).

2011                Rubinstein, Raphael. Dan Devine Inside Out. Time Equities Inc. Art-In-Buildings, 2011.

2006                Schmerler, Sarah. “Trans-Nascar.” The New York Times, 26 Mar. 2006, section 2, p. 2.

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/arts/transnascar.html.

                        Kalm, James. “Dan Devine and Ward Kelly.” The Brooklyn Rail, Apr. 2006, p. 3.

https://brooklynrail.org/2006/04/artseen/dan-devine-and-ward-shelley-at-pierogi.

2004                Kotik, Charlotta and Tumelo Mosaka. Open House: Working in Brooklyn. Brooklyn Museum, 2004, p. 64 (illustration)

                        Baird, Daniel. “Open House: Working in Brooklyn.” The Brooklyn Rail, May 2004.

https://brooklynrail.org/2004/05/art/open-house-working-in-brooklyn.

2003                Volk, Gregory. “Big Brash Brooklyn.” Art in America, Sep. 2003, p. 97.

                        Wilkin, Karen. “Open House: Working in Brooklyn.” The Journal, 2003.

2003                Rubinstein, Raphael. “Dan Devine at Hofstra Museum.” Art in America, Nov. 2003, p. 170.

                        Plagens, Peter. Dan Devine: from the inside out. HOFSTRARTS, 2003. The Brooklyn Rail, Early Summer 2002.

https://brooklynrail.org/2002/07/artseen/this-conversation-may-be-recorded-for-training-purposes.

 

2001                Fox, Judith Hoos. Surrounding, Interiors. 2wice, vol. 5, num. 2, pp. 14-15 (illustration).

2001                Odita, Odili. “Donald, Dan Devine.” Flash Art, Jan.-Feb. 2001, p. 106.

                        Fleisher, Noah. “Simply Devine.” Traconic Newspapers 4 January 2001, Sect. C pp. 1-2

                        Jaeger, William. “Reassembled visions.” Times Union, Albany, NY 28 January 2001.

2000                Mahoney, Robert. “Five Sculptors.” Timeout New York, 14-21 September 2000, p. 108.

                        Smith, Roberta. “Stretching the Definition of Sculpture.” The New York Times, 28 Jul. 2000, p. 29.

https://www.nytimes.com/2000/07/28/arts/art-review-stretching-definitions-of-outdoor-sculpture.html.

1999                Smith, Roberta, Rage for Art (Pierogi Reborn).” The New York Times, 19 Feb. 1999, p. 37.

https://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/19/arts/art-in-review-rage-for-art-pierogi-reborn.html.

                        Cotter, Holland. “Changes Aside, SoHo Is Still Very Much SoHo.” The New York Times, 12 Feb. 1999, p. 37.

https://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/12/arts/art-review-changes-aside-soho-is-still-very-much-soho.html.

                        “Paradise 8.” The New Yorker, 8 Mar. 1999, p. 14

                        Reid, Calvin. “Dan Devine at Pierogi.” Art in America, Feb. 1999, p. 112.

                        Kotik, Charlotta. “Peer Reviews (Highlights of 1998),” ARTnews, Jan.1999, p. 99.

                        Volk, Gregory. “The Chelsea Alternative.” Flash Art, Summer 1999, p. 68.

                        Tysh, George. “Thing ain’t what they used to be: from Center Galleries, a breath of dysfunctional air.” Metro Times Detroit, 8 September 1999.

                        Sterin, Jerry. “New exhibit is turned inside out: Brooklyn artist transforms a VW.” The Cincinnati Post, 16 September 1999.

1998                “Inside Out Car.” The World Today. CNN Television, 26 and 27, May 1998.

http://www.cnn.com/US/9805/26/insideout.car/.

                        “Dan Devine.” The New Yorker, 18 May 1998, pp. 18, 20.

                        Volk, Gregory. “Outside In.” How to Turn Your Car Inside Out, Pierogi 2000, 1998.

1995                Cameron, Dan. “Grounded.” ART/OMI Ledig House 1995. Art Omi, 1995.

1994                Myers, Terry R. “Dan Devine.” The New Art Examiner, March 1995.

1993                M.N. “Exposition de Sculptures.” Le Figero28, December 1993, Paris. 

Myers, Terry R. “Interview with Dan Devine and Alain Kirili.” Le Journal de Expositions, Paris.

1992                Mashech, Joseph. “Dan Devine.” Art in America, Jan. 1992, p. 121.

1991                Myers, Terry R. “Dan Devine” Lapiz Oct. 1991, p. 84. 

1990                Morgan, Robert C. Electrified Aura. Nahan Contemporary, 1990.

1989                Westfall, Stephen. The Milky Way, Shoshana Wayne Gallery, 1989.

                        Westfall, Stephen, “Dan Devine.” Art in America April 1989, p. 269.

1988                Handy, Ellen. “Dan Devine and Devin Dougherty.” Arts Oct. 1988.

1987                Ottmann, Klaus. “Photomannerisms.” Flash Art, Nov/Dec. 1987, pp. 71-2. 

                        Temin, Christine. “Oases of calm not just illusion.” The Boston Globe 15 January 1987, p. 80. 

1986                Daniels, Demetria. “It was a Hot Time In Old Downtown (Ninth Street, To be Exact). Downtown Magazine 18 June 1986, p.8-A. 

1983                Taylor, Robert. “Three for the Show.” The Boston Globe 14 April 1983. 

                        Temin, Christine. “Some of This and That.” The Boston Globe 24 February 1983.

1982                Taylor, Robert. “Transcendental Car Hoods by Dan Devine.” The Boston Globe 24 Aug. 1982, p. 39.

 

AWARDS AND COMMISSIONS

1996                Public Art Fund, Roots and Wings project, New York, NY

1993                Public Art Fund, Metrotech Center, outdoor sculpture commission, New York, NY

1990                Pollock/Krasner Foundation, Artist’s Support Grant

                        New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for Sculpture

1985-87           Bard Grant, Full Tuition for MFA Degree

 

COLLECTIONS

Art Omi

deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park

Francis J. Greenburger Collection

Hofstra University Museum of Art

University of New Hampshire at Dover 

 

PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

1995 - Present Member, Board of Directors, Art Omi International Artist Residency, Ghent, New York

 

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

1994 - Present             Professor of Fine ArtDepartment of Fine Arts, College of Liberal Arts, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY

  • Coordinator of Sculpture and Industrial Design
  • Departmental Committees: Chair, Curriculum Committee, Departmental Personnel Committee, Liaison to Hofstra Museum and Director Rosenberg Gallery
  • University Committees: Hofstra Museum Acquisitions Committee, Department Liaison to Environmental Safety Committee and FPB

 

EDUCATION

MFABard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY

 

Statement:

THE FIFTH REVOLUTION

 

The Fifth Revolution presents a series of new works by contemporary artist Dan Devine. These sculptures made of molded and stitched leather with motorcycle parts present a confluence of Devine's personal history and artistic practice. Devine’s new work encourages an urgent rumination on the implications of the emerging fifth industrial revolution and its living machines.

 

The choice of leather and motorcycle parts derives from two periods of Devine’s pre-artistic career:  first as a competitive motocross racer in both America and Europe and later as a leather artisan at Jamie Jacob’s leather shop on Haight Street in San Francisco during the height of the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood.  Devine employs these personally-significant materials to explore his career-long interest in recording objects and reversing conceptual boundaries. In earlier bodies of work, Devine had applied such tactics to blur the division of internal/external with his Inside-Out series(including his well-known Inside Out Cars) and of watching/watched with his Surveillance Sculptures series. In The Fifth Revolution, Devine turns his attention to the eroding boundary of biological/technological. 

 

For these sculptures, Devine cut commercially produced cowhides and formed them by molding the leather pieces around motorcycle parts. Devine utilizes the unique properties of cowhide to produce simultaneous positive and negative records of the engulfed machinery. The haunted impressions left by the absented machine parts act as a memento memori, reminders of the fragile, machine-like systems that keep us alive. 

 

These molded-leather records also echo Devine’s earlier work, where techniques such as frottage and photography are used to produce an object's negative, or reversal. The sculptures of The Fifth Revolution not only offer tentative unions of flesh and metal, but also subtle recordings of the uneasiness of unions in our own time: both physical social proximity as well as the increasing presence of technologies  within humans. The show's title, The Fifth Revolution,alludes to this development. Scholars refer to the fifth industrial revolution as the epoch when humans and their technology finally merge. While such medical promises as laboratory-grown human organs and neurologically responsive artificial limbs might seem like the fulfillment of a utopian fantasy, the shadow of such developments such as AI-enabled weapons and technological behavior control should give us pause to wonder how the fifth industrial revolution will codify.

 

When thinking of Devine’s new work alongside such artificial aides, these sculptures seem to offer an emotional prosthesis for our own time: providing an experience of coming together when such an event feels almost impossible. Devine’s biomorphic sculptures possess a sense of sexuality though not explicit nor pornographic. Rather they reference sexuality as the union of things, the marrying of opposites: man-made and natural, organic and inorganic, inside and outside, hard and soft, living and dead. 

 

At the center of The Fifth Revolution is Rider, the largest sculpture of the exhibition. The 350cc twin-engine JAWA 350 used in Rider offers a direct reference to Devin’s history as a motorcycle racer: while competing in international motocross races, Devine was sponsored by JAWA, a Czechoslovakian motorcycle made on the other side of Iron Curtain by a state-controlled communist manufacturer. In our contemporary age, the profound anxiety of an American rider racing successfully on a communist-produced bike may elude many of us, but at its time in the 1960’s, this uneasy pairing made Devine a competitor non grata amongst many of his peers. 

 

The motorcycle of Rider has been plucked and stripped of all its mechanical parts and then painted a fleshy oxblood red (which also happens to be the racing color of Czech motorcycles). The motorcycle frame is then wrapped in molded leather, achieving Devine’s long sought after inside-out motorcycle. The challenge of the inside out motorcycle stems from the fact, as Devine illuminates, that “a motorcycle is already inside out.” And so Devine employs his tactic of reversal, inverting not the physical structure of the motorcycle, but rather the relationship to the motorcycle, reversing the dichotomy of man and machine to allude to a single hybrid entity, the ultimate ambition and anxious phantom at the center of the fifth industrial revolution: the living machine.

 

This inversion of the dichotomy of man and machine is one of many reversals that populate Devine’s oeuvre, ranging from his plaster casts of the space between wrecked vehicles to his 10-year project of raising a flock of sheep. Devine employs these reversals to make us question our assumptions. As Devine himself attests, “Once art starts solving problems, it becomes illustrative. If anything, art creates problems. It asks a question about the world.”

 

In The Fifth Revolution, Dan Devine has produced a new series of sculptures that uneasily pair man and machine, couplings that seem haunting harbingers of an inevitable future that make us pause and ask, “Where are we going?” And it is this ability of Devine — to raise necessary questions and bring together such unlikely and even conflicting elements — that make him a necessary and important artist for our own seemingly irreconcilable and disconcerting times.