Daniel M.E. Schaal's diverse body of work spans between painting, printmaking, weaving and performance.
Cardboard and discarded packaging but often also textiles are some of the materials Daniel Schaal chooses to work with. His interest in the thrownaway is anchored in his fascination with the stories that those unanimated objects can tell when transformed into abstract settings and living structures.
The act of repetition is an important component when it comes to Daniel Schaal's artistic practice. Weaving is one example of it but it makes an important part also in his painting and printmaking. This strategy of iteration gives the viewer the feeling that the artist is operating within a framework of a self defined system.
'The Memory of Things'
For his work series The Memory of Things Daniel Schaal made use of an old scarf he owns, "weaving" into the printmaking project his own biography. Self biographical references are a characteristic trait in Daniel Schaal's artistic practice. It comes to the fore in his tapestries, for which he uses his own worn-out clothes and also in his relief prints that portray packages he received, kept and printed. By choosing textile as a matrix for The Memory of Things Daniel Schaal created a meeting point between his work with weaving and graphics researching it through three sub series he entitled The Read, The Search and The Trapped.
'The Read'
In The Read Daniel Schaal presents the project's main protagonist - his scarf - much like one would do enlisting the names of the characters in a theatre play. Daniel Schaal presents the object as a negative, a presentation through which the scarf seems to transform into a veil. This white, delicate, ghost like object, is printed against a black background on three full sheets of Somerset White Satin paper. The black "sculptural space" of the prints assume the role of a stage on which the scarf/veil succeeds to fulfil its full performative potential.
'The Search'
In search of a past stored in the scarf, Daniel Schaal attempts to unfold the different registers memories contain, appealing to the emotions and the atmosphere connected to the object. In fact Daniel Schaal attempts to reconstruct the exact colour, and yet he knows that a memory can change spontaneously, changing with it also the perception of the colour related to it.
The Search is a series of 10 monotypes in which Daniel Schaal explores the different shades of blue, from turquoise with its greenish shade to the mix of ultramarine and purple that hints to the red. In this space of poetic black and blue colours there are glimpses of light, where the vertical and horizontal lines of the compositions meet, and by forming the intersections, bring forward the white of the paper in those areas.
'The Trapped'
Also for the soft ground etchings in The Trapped series Daniel Schaal made use of the same scarf, imprinting the soft structure of the textile into the copper plate and making the etched plates form a new pattern when through the placement of one etched plate in a print over the other, Daniel Schaal draws our attention to the process of becoming. With the use of multi-layered superimposition Daniel Schaal is showing us the transition between the past and the present. He draws our attention to those few traces, made visible for only a brief moment in time, that bring memories and sensations that we have forgotten back to the surface.
DK article about Daniel M.E. Schaal and The Memory of Things
Daniel M.E. Schaal, born 1990, near Stuttgart, Germany. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
He received an MFA from Universität der Künste, Berlin (DE). Daniel M.E. Schaal's recent exhibitions include: UdK Berlin Art Award, Universität der Künste, Berlin (DE), Daniel Schaal – BOAZ.InP.RE_(T) . – in Malerei, Papier und Textil, Kulturhaus Centre Bagatelle, Berlin (DE), Four Levels of Care, Kino International, Berlin (DE), Nicht das Fell Berühren, LAGE EGAL, Berlin (DE).
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Much like the work of Daniel M.E. Schaal, Alexander Tillegreen's artistic practice attempts to unfold the different registers that impact our perception of the world.
DANIEL M.E. SCHAAL
The Memory of Things - The Read
DANIEL M.E. SCHAAL
The Memory of Things - The Search
DANIEL M.E. SCHAAL
The Memory of Things - The Trapped
