Artodyssey: Dan Witz

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Dan Witz

Born 1957 in Chicago, Illinois. Lives in New york.

Since the 80’s, Dan Witz is famous for his well known participation in the Street Art Movement, he looks for night scenes, and depicts a wild and fascinating world. One the one side, his oil paintings with very fine lines draw a very quite picture of the suburbs through the absence of soul. On the other side he shows bunches of people or animals, disshumanized, alienated, insane as if they were run by battery. Between presence and absence, his paitings always deal with the identity of human beings in modern societies.

studies:

1980
Cooper Union. B. F. A

1979
Skowhegan: Summer

1975-77
Rhode Island School of Design

Awards:

2000
New York Foundation for the Arts: Fellowship

1998
Public Art Fund: in the Public Realm: Fellowship

1992
New York Foundation for the Arts: Fellowship

1982
National Endowment for the Arts: Fellowship

''I started doing street art when I moved to New York City in the late 1970's. I've put up some kind of anonymous non-permissional outdoor work every summer since. The intention behind my projects has been varied -- aesthetic, socio-political, and personal -- but the motivation has always been to get out of the studio and have fun while making work that's direct and uncompromised.

My early influences were a mixture of punk rebellion, culture jamming and the scary urban blight of New York in the early eighties. As a painter, technically, I've always been fascinated by old master techniques of simulating reality. And lately, I've become very interested in the possibilities of digital imaging and visual sampling techniques.

In New York City, with the rise in real estate prices and the consequent lowering of tolerance for street art, my installation strategies have had to evolve. I used to spend hours on one piece, standing there painting with tiny brushes. But starting in the 1990's, with the police cracking down and graffiti becoming a felony, I had to work in less trafficked areas or get on and off location faster. So I started using stickers I made at home, integrating them into the wall with an airbrush. These days, the time I spend on site could be less than 60 seconds. I work from my motorcycle, out of a portable studio in the saddlebags. Before anyone can figure out what's happened, I'm usually already gone.''

DAN WITZ

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