Dan Mitchell 'Stallinnism'

Dan Mitchell’s exhibition 'Stallinnism' at Temnikova & Kasela gallery, featuring large posters re-enacting London’s fly-posting advertising; photographs portraying the artist as Joseph Stalin; and a flag; is based on The Coming Insurrection - The Invisible Committee (Semiotext(e), Los Angeles, 2009) and the ultra-left broadcasts on Novara Media. The work is designed to act as a trolling influence on the audience, and uses doubt, humour and fear to coordinate the sense that one is lost in the present situation as comfort in our distractions. This leaves us nowhere to go but into each other’s arms.

Dan Mitchell lives and works in London and has shown widely; LimaZulu, Gagosian, Christie’s, Kunstwerk. He is a founding member of Poster Studio (1994 – 1997) and also the publisher of Hard Mag, the specialist magazine that is ‘beyond reason’. Generally his work is generated on computers and rendered on paper in the forms of posters, magazine and prints. Taking the form of assemblages of culled images (from the web, magazines, posters, film and photography), it expresses Mitchell’s concerns with the psychopathology of everyday life and the obsessions that lie within us all driving us to shape the world.

Mitchell’s contributions include: ‘Fax’ (The Drawing Center, NYC, 2009); Stephan Willat’s Control Magazine Issue 18 (London, 2009); Co-curator of “Zodiac 3000″ (The J.G. Ballard Centre for Psychopathological Research sited at International Project Space, Bournville Centre for Visual Arts, Birmingham, 2008); ‘Night of the New Bohemians’ (La Galerie de la Butte, Paris, 2007); “New Dome” ongoing project with Richard Parry (London, 2006 – to present); Nang Gallery – (London, 2005 to present).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Review in Postimees (Janar Ala, 18.06.2014)