Dan Colen

Peres Projects, Berlin

Ernesto Esposito, Naples

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Bologna, MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Cara Domani opere dalla collezione Ernesto Esposito, 2012

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate although the overal tonality is slightly more green in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultraviolet light.
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Created in 2007, Shitface (Tribute to Joe Bradley) brilliantly combines Dan Colen’s chewing gum paintings with his distinctive utilisation of oil paint to imitate pigeon droppings. Wittily posing as a form of ‘collaboration’ between Colen himself and Joe Bradley – an artist who exhibited twice at Peres Projects in 2007 – Shitface (Tribute to Joe Bradley) acts as a unique subversion of Bradley’s corpus of ‘Robot’ works. Using stretchers which had been prepared by Bradley, Colen graphitises his contemporary’s trademark canvases via a dissident and humorous reinterpretation of abstract expressionist modes of creation – particularly those epitomised by Jackson Pollock and his canon of action painting. Appropriating Bradley’s own subversion of Minimalist principles, Colen intervenes and sabotages the other artist’s inquiry through the inclusion of his own signature use of gum and painterly simulation of bird droppings. The mocking, child-like smiley face that crowns the canvas body further anthropomorphises the work, whilst its elevated height endows Shitface (Tribute to Joe Bradley) with connotations of grandeur traditionally associated with public monuments – here made authentic via the sullying stain that pervades all inner-city public landmarks. In its amusing yet thought-provoking fusion of traditional oil paint with the thoroughly contemporary and base material of chewed-up and spat-out chewing gum, Shitface (Tribute to Joe Bradley) is a parodic archetype of Colen’s sardonic and contentious artistic practice.