DAN LIE: UNTIL 2029

 

Casa Triângulo is pleased to present Until 2029, Dan Lie's third solo exhibition at the gallery.

 

This year, 2024, marks a decade since Dan Lie first began to present site-and-time-specific works at art institutions. Due to the transformation of their materials over time and the action of other-than-human forces, these installations cease to exist physically by the end of their exhibition periods, making them what Lie refers to as “works that live and die.”

 

Over the years, the elements that remain at the end of these works – such as ceramic vases and cotton fabrics naturally dyed with turmeric – have been recovered and used as the raw material for developing new sculptures.

 

The procedure of dyeing fabrics through natural means began in 2018 but took on a new dimension in 2022 with the presentation of the installation Grieving Secret Society at the 58th Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, USA. In the process of creating these works, Lie established a conceptual parallel with mourning – we use the process of mourning to rework our feelings about someone or something that has died. In this case, the sculptures are a reworking of an installation that no longer exists.

 

Attempts to deal with movement, change and impermanence, coupled with insights gained from these efforts, have guided Dan Lie's practice. In the case of creating sculptures, the creative process was confronted by an ethical conflict, as the change of matter does not occur at the same speed as in the ephemeral installations.

 

Studio Dan Lie has adopted a policy of nonaccumulation and does not have physical spaces for storing artworks. Since 2023, a process has begun with the aim of integrating this new body of work into the philosophy of impermanence. In this process, a deadline of five years is established, counting from the date the work is shown for the first time. If acquired, the works will remain under the collector's custody indefinitely, and the deadline will be voided. Otherwise, within this five-year period, the works will return to Studio Dan Lie, where they will be either transformed into other artworks or destroyed.

 

The exhibition at Casa Triângulo features works with deadlines ending in 2024, 2028, and 2029. Those with deadlines in 2029 are being shown here for the first time, and were created with the mortal remains of the installation Outres, which was featured in the 35th Bienal de São Paulo in 2023. After the end of that installation, nothing remained but records that bore witness to it (photographs and a video recording of various moments of this ephemeral work’s existence) and the pieces of fabrics that were suspended around the work, which were used as the raw material for making these new sculptures.

 

The works featured in this exhibition were carefully selected to reflect the evolution of Dan Lie’s sculptural production, emphasizing the process of continuity and resignification of matter as an integral part of it. The work Memory Stick (2015), produced for Dan’s first solo show at Casa Triângulo, is also featured in this show, spotlighting it as the starting point for this production.