René Daniëls (b. 1950)

Metro Pictures, New York

Born in Eindhoven in 1950, René Daniëls was granted only a short time to build an artistic reputation. His first exhibition was held in 1977 in Düsseldorf; ten years later a severe stroke put an end to his career as a painter. During this brief period though, Daniëls created a unique and fascinating body of work, which draws national and international attention.

Daniëls has exhibited extensively in Holland with one-person exhibitions at a.o. Helen van der Meij Gallery in Amsterdam and the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. His work has been included in major international exhibitions such as Westkunst in Cologne, Docmenta 7, Zeitgeist in Berlin, '60-80' at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the 1980 Paris Biennale and the 1983 Sao Paulo Biennale.

Towards the end of the 1970s, Daniëls' inaugural works came into being in reaction to conceptual and minimal art, which was predominantly abstract. Flying records, a camera and falling books- all carriers of information- fill his colourful, fluently painted canvases. Nevertheless, it quickly became apparent that Daniëls' work could not be considered part of the 'Neue Wilden' movement, but was more in line with a French-Belgian tradition that emphasises the relationship between language, image and meaning. Picabia, Magritte and especially Broodthaers were important role-models for Daniëls. Using a highly recognisable iconographic vocabulary and word-image associations, Broodthaers made an ironic and poetic comment on the position of the artist and his work in an art world driven by economic considerations. These themes appealed to a painter like Daniëls, who was also looking for a way to legitimise his work- a métier that was continually being declared 'dead' as a result of the emergence of new media such as photography and video.

In his first one-person show in New York at Metro Pictures in 1984 Daniëls exhibited a group of paintings of which many were completed during a six-month stay in New York. In this series of paintings, he continues his use of recurrent material from previous paintings in combination with past and current New York impressions and experiences. A painting of the Brooklyn Bridge joined with the Arc the Triomphe (see illustration) is a version of painting done in 1979 after an earlier visit to New York; the World Trade Towers silhouetted against vertical brushstrokes first appeared as ‘Two I’s Fighting over a dot’ in 1982. Other paintings depict abstract flashes of light in a rock club and portraits of the artist as magician and observer of the scene.

The work offered here for sale, Historia Mysteria/Adventures Underground, is part of this series, started in 1981. This time the divergent paintings can be interpreted as a comment or criticism on the institutional art world. We see the Arc the Triomphe as symbol of the former centre of the arts Paris and a large woman rising above the Brooklyn Bridge inviting the viewer to the new place to be: New York. Another painting titled Historia Mysteria, 1982 (see illustration) shows a man with umbrella in a dull forest, accompanied with a turtle and a snail which can be interpreted as a representation of the dull art world. (Exh. catalogue, Stedelijk Van Abbe Museum 1998, p. 25 ‘Rene Daniels - The most Contemporary Picture Show’ )

Daniëls continually managed to surprise his audience with new changes in the course of his visual thinking. His work can be described as lucid and enigmatic, humorous but also shrewd and intelligent.