Little transformations occur in ways that highlight the daily chemistry of life as it is on the street
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Dane Klingaman
Dane Klingaman is an abstract painter with modernist influences underneath postmodern ones. His painting and mixed media work incorporates as much reconstruction as deconstruction. He makes art from found objects, and interacts with things in the work such as old paint, enamel, and found color. Layers merge with layers in ways that reveal as much as they hide. Objects become things other than what they are; and there’s avid play behind the deception. Little transformations occur in ways that highlight the daily chemistry of life as it is on the street. He seems to be saying that things truly are not what they are in these little daily deceptions between us and ourselves. Yet the overall effect seems to invite you in on it.
His digital media work recasts "photoreality" into a zone of color, form and storyboard detail. Still real, but like feet are walking two inches above the pavement. Painstaking detail coexists with broad technicolor zones to make reality "pop." He works out his figurative jones here, too. The work is warmly received by clients who always seem to find one that fits. He often riffs on friends in these, but only when the subject suits him. He is regularly pestered with requests to "do me" but will not paint for beer.
Dane grew up in the Liberty Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, a neighborhood that bridges the wide gulf between the street-savvy Mission and Volvo-friendly Noe Valley. He attended high school in Minneapolis (where his totem fish, the musky lurks in the city lakes) before the University of Charleston lured him to West Virginia’s capital city. There, Dane studied with Mark Tobin Moore, Hank Keeling and P. Joseph Mullins, all nationally recognized artists, professors and curators.
Charleston proved to be a middle-bear city. Not too large, not too small; just right for encouraging young talent to study and exhibit in venues large and small. It’s arts community proved hospitable and remarkably eclectic in its influences, from kudzu to Jay Z, neatly focused around the hub of Taylor Books where Dane has been known to help out running the gallery and making a mean espresso. Artists like Charly Jupiter Hamilton and Jamie Miller drop in kick the tires of new works with Dane on a regular basis. Dane says, "I’m not here because of opportunities to sell my work. I’m here because of the opportunity to network with other artists who’ve been doing this 40 years."
Dane’s work has appeared in the Appalachian Corridors Show at the Clay Center, the West Virginia Juried Exhibition, the Blue Door Studio Show, the Art Emporium, the "Clothos" exhibit at Covenant House, the Taylor Books Gallery, and is available online at The Saatchi Gallery website. He has been the subject of articles in the Charleston Gazette, Charleston Daily Mail and Metro Valley magazine. He was the recipient of the University of Charleston’s 2007 Hank Keeling Award. Oh, and he loves baseball, his first word was "ball" and he plays a mean shortstop in the hardball leagues. There’s a little yin-yang for ya. He sparkles on the field and off, but the studio is where it all comes together.
~Nanker Phelge