The Filterless Present
Interview: Daniel Desure
By Jonny Coleman
No doubt for Angelenos, this fall is oversaturated with openings, events, late night museum parties, and the like. Early in September, the concept of the weekend has already transformed you into a drawn-and-quartered ragdoll, your attention split amongst the several hundred galleries, one-off 100 artist theme shows, or the ever-so-convenient-art walks. With Basel Miami looming somewhere in the near future, the fall becomes some sort of over-hyped, under-groomed beast with 8,000 heads screaming for your attention.
This October, however, Daniel DeSure offers a very refreshing debut ‘Wouldn’t it be nice,’ a terse collection of photographs and one very interesting re-interpretation of the LED ticker. For being his first exhibition, DeSure has maturely preened and edited his work down to evoke his thesis. Illustrated mostly through the human desire to travel, civilization creates as many hazards as it can cure, and the confrontation of this literal and figurative turbulence [i.e. the variables that can and will go wrong along the way] is his route to a more peaceful habitation of this planet.
If the imagery and approach seem a little mature for a maiden outing, that’s because they are. This show has been gestating with the artist for his whole life. Born on the cusp of the video revolution, DeSure’s “father was doing illustration/graphic design at the time and [his] mother was an elementary school teacher. [They] were always moving around hustling for work until the late eighties when [they] moved to LA for a while…video was bigger than ever and my dad started designing movie posters and video covers.”
DeSure would later study experimental film and video at Cal Arts and spend his post graduate days producing installations of all shapes and sizes. Most notably, he produced Doug Aitken’s ‘Sleepwalkers,’ and after founding his own production company, Commonwealth, he has helped realize the visions of Omer Fast and Francesco Vezzoli.
Commonwealth handpicks projects, all of which seem to have a technical challenge or other interesting obstacle that makes the undertakings worth while, and helps their artists execute their visions, as often an artist’s concepts require a lot of technical, expert guidance. In this manner, every Commonwealth project is usually very unique from the next, but the multi-media ‘play’ and a very methodical approach to each installation remain constant. Likewise, DeSure has chosen to build a wild wall hanging combination of LED tickers that he has modified. He approached it how he would normally approach a piece of his clients: surround yourself with the experts and go from there.
Much of the photography in his exhibition comes from a work trip here or a tech scout there for another project, as DeSure finds himself traveling frequently. It comes then as no surprise that travel in some part alluded to through the whole body of work. Likewise, DeSure has become a strict self-editor, erring on the side of just enough visual information versus a stimulus or compositional overload.
“As far as the photographs go, I’m attracted to images and subjects that are easily identifiable, and a lot is edited out…I start from a larger idea and cut it down. I’ve always been attracted to art that’s created in this way. I have a problem with a lot of graphic design for this reason. There’s usually too much on the canvas at once. I think we’re so used to having layers and layers of effects and stylizing these days that we started considering that the ‘real’ or ‘natural.’”
The resulting body of work echoes what a large part of his work and life have been about so far, the quest for solace and peace through simplification, using newer and newer technologies to simplify, simplify, simplify.
‘Wouldn’t it be nice’ opens on October 4 at Found Gallery.
- JC
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