Daniel Gerwin

Daniel Gerwin, Orpheus’ Mistake, acrylic on found framed mirror, 28″ x 17.5″, 2011, Center for Emerging Visual Artists at the Galleries at Moore (photo from the West Collects website – vote for Daniel Gerwin)

DoN met Daniel Gerwin at the Center for Emerging Visual Artists Introduction 2012 new Fellows reception at the Galleries at Moore. “Title Magazine is the title of a new on-line, visual arts magazine based in Philadelphia. We launched in August.” DoN asked what platform the magazine is based on? Tumblr? “It’s on WordPress, I’m not the technical guy, I’m into the editing and all that side of it, getting writers and whatever. We have someone else who’s a very good graphic designer and she does everything. All the WordPress work. I can’t, I don’t know anything about it.”, he said laughing. DoN added a link to Title Magazine in the DoNArTNeWs blogroll.

Daniel’s work employs tromp l’oeil in a new way, painting on wood and mirrors, DoN is reminded of the painting style of Gerhard Richter the way the paint is smeared yet presents a naturalistic expression, “When you look at it, it’s immediately clear that it’s paint. The other piece that I have is a shaped painting.” DoN was mesmerized by the optical illusion of the painting, it switches back and forth from wood parquet to abstract painting. “The tromp l’oeil, I’m interested in, the whole idea of an illusion, that is subverting itself and actually calling your attention back to what’s real about it, it’s reality of the actual paint in front of you. But I’m also interested in the whole idea of, like the first thing you said about parquet flooring, the domestic space and the way we inhabit our space. And then I sort of have the thought that the way, as we live in a space over time, we actually come to haunt that space ourselves. And then it haunts us back.”

“It’s that integration between us and the place that we live. My studio is in my own home, I work in my home so that idea of a presence is interesting to me. The other thing that is on my mind with these mirrors is there’s a tradition in the Jewish religion, which is how I was raised, when somebody in your family dies you cover the mirrors. My mother died in 2009, so there’s something of that that is still part of my work and there’s that aspect that I’m thinking about and it also has to do with when you, because there’s bits or mirror that you look between, you do catch glimpses of yourself. There is both the sense of self-voyeurism and a further extension of the mystery of representation, you’re there but you’re sort of not quite there. But that there is a division brought by the paint between our world and the other side. So that connects back to me through those traditions.”

The Center for Emerging Visual Artists (CFEVA), in cooperation with Moore College of Art & Design, presents an exhibition by the new Career Development Program Fellows. A highly selective fellowship with only a 2% acceptance rate, these six artists represent some of the most promising talent among emerging artists in the region: Leslie Friedman, Daniel Gerwin, Rebecca Gilbert, Kay Healy, Heechan Kim, and Johanna Inman.