Dan Walsh

Yellow square shapes on paper.
Yellow square shapes on paper.

Dan Walsh (b. 1960), Threshold, 2013. Acrylic on canvas, 70 × 70 in. Collection of the artist; courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. Photograph by Steven Probert. © Dan Walsh

Born 1960 in Philadelphia, PA
Lives and Works in New York, NY

The large geometric paintings by Dan Walsh included in the Biennial are recent examples of the artist’s longstanding search for “minimal order met with maximal optical force.” Although the shapes’ lines and curves are so perfectly formed that they appear to have been made mechanically, close looking reveals that Walsh painted every line by hand through a painstaking layering process. The artist has described this practice as “trying to paint my way out of the grid . . . in and out of corners.”

The patterns in these paintings, as in much of Walsh’s work, reference historical forms such as Tibetan mandalas, Peruvian textiles, and Op art, as well as contemporary computer circuitry and 3-D graphics.


On View
Fourth Floor 

Dan Walsh’s work is on view in the Museum’s fourth floor galleries.

On the Hour

A 30-second online art project:
Maya Man, A Realistic Day In My Life Living In New York City

Learn more about this project

Learn more at whitney.org/artport

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