DAVID DIAO
Studios and Sales
December 7 - January 25, 2020
David Diao's Studios and Sales, an exhibition of one new and one old work, is an exquisitely resonant snapshot of
an artist's practice spanning over 50-plus years. It comprises a series of 25 paintings from 1992 documenting his yearly
sales, and a new, large painting depicting the footprints of all the studios he has occupied since 1964.
I made the 25 small paintings in 1992 to document my sales record from 1968 on.
Red dots are affixed to each canvas enumerating the number of paintings sold in each year.
The number of dots fluctuate from year to year. Many paintings are devoid of any dots.
In 1991 I made a painting titled 'Studios' which diagrammed all the spaces I lived and worked
in since coming to New York in 1964. A few years ago I moved to a new studio. I decided to make
an updated version that incorporated this and a sold country property that had missed inclusion in
the earlier version.
The group of Sales paintings was first shown at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Dijon the year they were
made. Studios was completed recently. Both works are two-dimensional dataviz manifestations that
predate current immersive and interactive versions, and offer, though graphic substitutes, private and
vulnerable personal information.
Diao painting his sales records is the opposite of bragging; sensitive and extremely personal, the
alternating lean and fat years have a built-in implication of failure. Like On Kawara's date paintings,
these deadpan, neutral depictions of facts are coupled with the emotionally desaturated representations
of the spaces that were the sites of his creative life.
David Diao's work combines painting, theory and critical reflection. Since the mid-eighties
he pioneered the unconventional use of information, a pre-digital visualization of data as a
resource of expression in art where graphs, diagrams, directories, charts and logos are stand-ins
for traditional modernist form of representation. A deft master of paradox, Diao is known for his
extraordinarily sensual surfaces jarringly interrupted by vinyl appliqué.
In his essay Escape from Flatland: David Diao's Handmade Visualizations of Information, Michael Corris writes:
"In Diao's work, the modes of data or information visualization stand in for a conception of objectivity, and that
these structures -- coupled with a specific type of painting process and a particular kind of subject matter -- function
to reshape the meaning of subjectivity in art."*
There are three contemporary forces that collude to render this show -- and Diao's broader engagement
with painting -- so timely:
1.TMI and The Spectacle of Voyeurism: Our culture of fascination with other people's affairs, intensified
by the intentional or coerced oversharing of personal information, utterly transforms our interactions with
the world, whether in social media or IRL.
2. The Commoditization of Our Data: Big Data, small data, mega-data, personal data, the flood and form
and exploitation of data alters the way we construct meaning.
3. Art Market Validation: However skewered or criticized, it is undeniable that in this moment,
the clanging bell of speculative market performance is drowning out other measures of value, success
and historical importance.
Revealing everything, he ends up sharing nothing. Sales and Studios are both peripheral, the external parameters
of a life of artmaking. In the end, David Diao, one of the greatest contemporary painters, is not letting you in. An artist
who cold-delivers sensitive personal facts finally has history catching up to him.
* Corris, M. (2018) Escape from Flatland. In P. Tinari (Ed.), David Diao: Diao Deqian (pp. 39-50).
Ullens Center for Contemporary Art: Beijing
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David Diao Studios and Sales installation shot |
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David Diao Studios and Sales installation shot |
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David Diao Studios and Sales installation shot |
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David Diao Studios Updated 2019 acrylic and vinyl on canvas 78 x 48 inches |
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David Diao Sales (detail) 1992 acrylic and vinyl on canvas (25 canvases) 21 x 14.7 inches (each of 25) |