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| 05.21.09 | |||||
| VOLANDISMO- New Paintings by Mark Dancey @ Re: View Contemporary Gallery. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Possessing that rare combination of technical prowess, an incisive intellect and a rapier wit, painter Mark Dancey is simply one of the city of Detroit’s most important artists. As a world-renowned illustrator, Dancey first utilized his skills in the early 90’s to design posters and graphics for his band, the genre-defying, Big Chief, but was soon designing memorable album covers for other bands, most notably, Badmotorfinger, by Soundgarden. Soon the big label relegated Big Chief to the bottom corporate drawer, and Dancey became disillusioned by the business. However, rock and rock stars amused him, so Dancey helped to conceive and publish the wickedly sardonic and satirical Motorbooty Magazine, sending up the hypocrisy and excess of the Rock and Roll culture with an insider’s slant and a literary guerilla style. Motorbooty was like National Lampoon if it would have come from Hamtramck instead of Harvard. In 1997 Dancey began painting, first with acrylic but soon he began working in oil. Within 5 years, he had taught himself (with some tutelage by painter friends) to use this rich yet difficult medium to create his first exhibit of aerial nudes, which mixed classical forms, narratives of myth and beauty, and the trademark Dancey wit. The results were shown at his 2003 ©Pop exhibit, “Flying Circus”. Volandismo is the second offering of Dancey’s highly original takes on the timeless nude female form. Re: View Contemporary Gallery is pleased to present Volandismo, which runs until July 25th, 2009.
Joseph Campbell said that myths are public dreams, while dreams are private myths. Painter Mark Dancey is producing strangely hybrid works that combine personal narratives with traditional myths. For his current series of round oil paintings of acrobatic nudes he studied the great ceiling painters of the past and has adopted their strategies for rendering the body in forced perspective. When we see figures from the low vantage point at which Dancey presents them, they seem to loom and float above us, and naturally appear in a mythical light. With a few symbolic props, Dancey's divine aerialists each inhabit a space that stretches to a three hundred and sixty degree horizon and invoke associations that are at once religious, erotic, and puzzling. Taking its title from a Spanish word for an archaic theological science devoted to the study of flying beings, Volandismo is an exhibit of works that freely mix myths and dreams, mysteries and revelations. Painter and illustrator Mark Dancey's work has appeared in many consumer magazines including Spin, Esquire, and Details, as well as on CD covers for rock bands. Also a publisher of and major contributor to Motorbooty Magazine in the late 1980s through the 1990's, Dancey's work has been shown in galleries across the country. Dancey lives and works in Detroit. Volandismo opens June 13, 2009 at Re: View Contemporary Gallery, which is located in the Willys Overland Lofts. # # # MEDIA CONTACT:
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