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Daniel G. Hill — Sculpture, Drawing, Installation, Painting

3D. Contemporary Explorations in Concrete Sculpture
Museum Wilhelm Morgner: RAUM SCHROTH; Soest, Germany
8 September–1 December, 2024

Daniel G. Hill: Recent Work

"How to describe Daniel G. Hill’s works, with their lucid but elusive play of perfect and imperfect, insubstantial geometric shapes? Drawings made tangible, sculptures, or projections that retain the memory of two-dimensional images? All of the above? None? However we answer these questions, there is no doubt that Hill’s compelling constructions, carefully crafted of hard and soft materials, are about the history of their making. Yet the revelation of that history makes the works unstable and unpredictable. Scale shifts, as we contemplate Hill’s constructions. We are first captured by large rhythms and then engaged by small details that announce how things have been assembled: knots, elegant screw-eyes and rings, clusters of interlocking hardware. We concentrate on the differences between matte cords and smooth PVC tubes or between sleek metal rings and the knots that engage them, mentally recapitulating both tactile experience and the action of the hand. Hill encourages us to draw connections between various shapes and implied forms, yet, at the same time, his works refuse to yield to logical analysis and, almost always, confound our expectations.

"That Hill is fascinated by geometry and wordless visual relationships is evident. He is capable of making arcane mathematical calculations, yet his delicate constructions are arrived at intuitively. They are not three-dimensional visualizations of equations, although Hill says that he often discovers fairly clear internal relationships in the course of working out a structure. He also remains alert to the unexpected, adjusting the supporting points of wall-mounted pieces to create the outline of one perfect square among many “drawn” elements or to allow some components to thrust into space and enter into a complex three-dimensional conversation with less aggressive portions of the piece. Some works read as abstract distillations of ungraspable experience—like diagrams of Cubist-inflected perceptions. What is constant is Hill’s choice of ordinary materials, often associated with the everyday and the vernacular, and his insistence on economical, uncomplicated construction methods that remain visible, if we look closely.

"Hill has said that he believes the artist’s role is to remind us of our capacity to wonder. His mysterious, deeply engaging works do just that."

Karen Wilkin
New York, February 2019
catalogue essay for Rope, Rod, Rag

Bio:

Daniel G. Hill was born in 1956 in Providence, R.I. He received an A.B., Magna Cum Laude, from Brown University and an M.F.A. from Hunter College, C.U.N.Y. He lives and works in New York City. Hill is a multi-disciplinary artist who has worked in sculpture, installation, painting, photography and digital media. He has exhibited in the U.S. for over 40 years and, since 2012, in Europe, Asia, Australia and Central America. His work is held in the collections of the Stiftung Konzeptuelle Kunst (DE); Stichting EST art foundation (NL); Metropolitan Museum of Art; MoMA Library Special Collection; New York Public Library; Phillips Collection; Cleveland Museum of Art; Whitney Museum of American Art, The Frances Mulhall Achilles Library; Yale University Art Gallery; US Embassy, Beijing Embassy Annex, US Department of State; and the Arkansas Art Center. He is the recipient of a fellowship in painting from the National Endowment for the Arts and has been awarded three year-long residencies at PS122 in New York City.

Recent Exhibitions

3D. Contemporary Explorations in Concrete Sculpture, Museum Wilhelm Morgner: RAUM SCHROTH; Soest, Germany; curated by Ivo Ringe and Juliane Rogge; 8 September–1 December, 2024
ZEIGT EUCH KONKRET!—National and international concrete art, Kunstverein Wiligrad, Lübstorf, Germany; 13 July–1 September, 2024
Beyond the Surface: Constructing Destruction, Westbeth Gallery, New York, NY, 5–25January 2024
On Balance: New Work by American Abstract Artists, Art Cake, Brooklyn, NY, curated by Mary Birmingham, 2023
CENTURY. idee bauhaus, Modern Art Gallery in Veszprém, Hungary, 2023
Harmony and Contrast—Chromatic Painting at the Turn of the Century, Transmitter, Brooklyn, NY, 2022
Parallel Play, John Molloy Gallery, New York, NY, 2021
Uncharted: American Abstraction in the Information Age, Hofstra University Museum of Art, Hempstead, NY, 2020
Rope, Rod, Rag, Abstract Project, Paris, France, 2019