17 december 2021, Flor Linckens
Daniel Bodner: “A photograph is an ending — just this one moment and that’s it. A painting stretches out that moment.”
Galerie Roger Katwijk was supposed to show an exhibition by Daniel Bodner until 29 January. But as a result of the new government measures, the exhibition will only be on show online, on GalleryViewer. The American painter works figuratively, making skillful use of light. He made many paintings in New York City. In it, you see how different New Yorkers move through the city; quickly and purposefully. These are everyday imaginations, people carrying an umbrella or making a quick phone call on the way. The works often effectively show the loneliness and isolation of a large city. However, Bodner is not concerned with making an exact representation of reality, but he mainly focuses on a truthful representation of light and space, in which he refers to classical painting traditions.
The starting point for these paintings is in many cases a photograph that the artist previously took, and his work is therefore often about the relationship between painting and photography. He refers to a quote from the famous author Susan Sontag: “The painter constructs and the photographer discloses.” Sometimes Bodner manipulates these photos with Photoshop. He is also fascinated by the fact that in a photo, extreme overexposure will actually destroy the image.
Daniel Bodner, Skaters 4, 2021, Galerie Roger Katwijk.
Bodner: “I think a photograph, no matter what you do with it, is one specific moment in time. In a sense it’s like death. It’s an ending — just this one moment and that’s it. A painting stretches out that moment. It breathes life back into it. To make a painting takes time, you can’t do it in a millisecond. It stretches out the reality somehow through the time that it takes for the elements to come together. I know maybe a viewer doesn’t read that or think that so much, but I believe that somehow the time is recorded there.”
Daniel Bodner, Elisabeth Wolffstraat, 2021, Galerie Roger Katwijk.
Between 1990 and 2005, Bodner lived in Amsterdam, as one of the many artists who came to the Netherlands because of the Dutch light. He initially traveled to Berlin as a lover of German culture and painting, but on his way back to the United States he passed Amsterdam — a city he liked so much that he wanted to live there. In 2005, Bodner returned to New York, but he still spends half of his time in the Netherlands. That explains why Bodner has also painted various street scenes that will look very familiar to the Dutch. The exhibition 'Constructed Images' in Gallery Roger Katwijk shows a number of these recent Dutch paintings: from people skating and an early morning scene on the Prinsengracht to a cosily lit Brouwersgracht.
