Dan Mills: Interferences

Montserrat College of Art Galleries
Beverly, Massachusetts

Curated by Leonie Bradbury
August 24 - September 19, 2015

Dan Mills is interested in visualizing information both through additive mark making and erasure. The inclusion of found, vintage geographical maps and the practice of painting directly on to the maps has been a recurring facet of the artist’s work for several years. Mills sources are as diverse as children’s atlases and classroom maps. The series explores history, geopolitics and current events.

The artist addresses changes to the landscape as a result of conflict and highlights hidden geographical information. His mark-making decisions, such as color and shape choices, are guided by rules or game-like strategy. Mills paints over political boundaries, dates, keys, and names of human-made and natural landmarks- information usually based on histories of conquest and imperialism. This all disappears beneath variegated fields of painted color that gradually informs the translation of collective research and collated data into a visual language.