Dan Rees

UK, b. 1982

Dan Rees’s sculptures are made using a building method in which earth is compressed in wooden moulds to form walls that are suitable for housing. They are highly dense and have been compressed layer by layer in a process that mimics that of deep geological time. Rees plays with the relationship between painting and sculpture, drawing inspiration from patterns found in rock strata to create sculptures and imprints that are reminiscent of landscapes yet maintain an unknowable quality. This new body of work is of a calm reflective nature and speaks of the manner of sedimentation, in which the inherent exchange value of the resources beneath our feet, taken as a given, imprint on our minds, mediate our understanding of landscape, and mould our social conditions. In the exhibition, Rees’s work also evokes the symbiosis of concrete and soil, which characterise the material junction between nature and concrete dams.

Dan Rees has had recent solo exhibitions including: Ruins of the Cambrian Age, Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin, Depressed Earth, Murias Centeno, Lisbon (2016); and Road Back to Relevance, Nomas Foundation, Rome (2015). His work has been featured in recent group exhibitions at GAMeC, Bergamo; Budafabriek, Kortrijk, Belgium; Fellbach Small Sculpture Triennial (2016). In 2017 a monograph of Rees’s work was published by Mousse.

(Text: 38th EVA International catalogue)