Dane Mitchell at Institut d'Art Contemporain, Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes

June 21, 2018

Dane Mitchell is featured in Otium #3 at Institut d'Art Contemporain, Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes. Otium #3 collects the work of three artists, Jean-Marie Perdrix, Linda Sanchez and Dane Mitchell, who each have in common the idea of seizing matter as a foundation of their work. Mineral, organic and cosmic matter are explored by each of these artists, experimenting with their possibilities in different ways.

The work of New Zealand artist Dane Mitchell probes elusive zones, transitions between materiality and immateriality, intuition and knowledge, absence and presence. Based on natural elements (light, rain, vapor), his research tends to transcend our manner of perceiving these manifestations and to explore the limits of our perceptions. Refined and discrete, Mitchell’s artworks emerge from an attempt to capture and fix organic, fleeting substances.

Sometimes accompanied by scientific apparatus (parabola, pumps, equipment for making measurements), sometimes transformed (metal alloys, perfume), the materials employed are subjected to a number of experiments by way of subtle sensorial systems (vaporization of an odor, occultation of sight, lures) or through their reconfiguration in space (contextual shifts, plays with scale).Starting with these interventions, Mitchell plays with scientific principles that are based on vision, the permanence of matter and our objective understandings of the physical phenomena that we experience in everyday life. With a lightness in manner, he diverts and reuses scientific vocabulary to keep our discernment at a distance and arouse our imagination.