Village

Bursting with colour, texture, shape and form, Dan Perfect’s vibrant and bustling canvases might be read as pictorial microcosms of an ever-advancing technological age. His compositions, tightly bound to the physical act of making the works, become metaphors for a scientific age of experimentation, development and change. In Village (2007), the artist leaves areas of bare canvas exposed, which he surrounds with fluid brushwork. ‘Though my paintings quote different kinds of aesthetics and textures, it’s all done with brush work,’ Perfect explains. ‘The first layer is made with water-based paint and can look like spray paint. The backgrounds are mutable and flux-like. I put sharper paint on slowly until things start to coalesce and appear out of the formlessness. I want things to emerge out of this organic mulch and build up rhythmic and density counterpoints. As artistic references I’m interested in works by Per Kirkeby, Roberto Matta, Alan Davie and Van Gogh. The titles of my paintings are indicators towards partial narrative readings and I think of them as part of the painting palette. They’re like a punctum or emotional provocateur. Village, for example – how terrifying is the word ‘village’? This painting depicts the village of the damned to some extent: it’s community, it’s cellular proximity, information interchange. It’s a lot more threatening than some of my other canvases. But it’s also quite bucolic – a happy hell.’