Assembly: Dan Walsh

Galerie Thomas Schulte is pleased to present Assembly, a solo exhibition featuring recent paintings by Dan Walsh. Here, Walsh continues his process-oriented approach to generating images that are reduced in vocabulary yet layered in intricate systems. Initially appearing as smooth, minimalist patterns of discrete units, they gradually reveal disruptions, irregularities, and gentle traces.

These compositions are structured around geometric, grid-like rows and columns, where the images’ cells soften at the edges, becoming fluid and, at times, taking the form of pods or capsules. Accumulations of time, paint, and form produce continuous shifts: from vibrant juxtapositions of color and alternations of black and white that recall classical optical illusions, to faint changes in contrast and nuanced gradients. In the square, medium-scale canvases, seriality and its subtle variations playfully unfold, as the images envelop us in their visual world—seemingly constructing their own internal logic only to subvert it.

Stereo (2023) is composed of rows of capsules in a stacked, pyramid-like central structure that resembles a chart or diagram—it's a construction that recurs in different forms and iterations throughout Walsh’s work. As is also often the case, the image is rooted along its bottom edge by the pyramid’s widened base, mirroring and grounding us in our physical and perceptual relationship to it. A formal symmetry extends from side to side, but its continuity is broken somewhat by the variation in colors that bound the innermost components of the pyramid. These interior elements are both more enclosed and insular, and more open, as the capsules appear in varying degrees of transparency.

As the columns progress from the center, they slowly fade into another rhythm, altered first in transparency and then in color: with complementary color combinations of orange and blue, golden yellow and purple, pale pink and green, followed by the stark contrast of black and white. Movement vibrates outward and upward—a multi-directional, three-dimensional effect that’s reflected by the work’s title. Outlines around some of the capsules begin to melt downward, connecting one row to the next. The tiered structure dips and swells softly in waves, pulling at the fixed regularity of the image’s isolated units. Some pill-like forms group together, joined horizontally by a single line of color that offers a kind of reading cue.

In two other paintings of the same dimensions, Reform I & II (2024), another kind of stacked structure is built up from rounded, irregular forms. The composition is anchored through negative space, as columns and rows give shape to a series of triangular forms—a center aisle, like a spine. In these two paintings, a semblance of perforations and folds lends a paper-like quality. Torn-off partial ovals bear teeth-like edges that are likewise soft and curved; slivers of space between rows at times give the impression of a shadow, suggesting overlap. Though ostensibly composed of the same structure and components, what comes to the fore in this pair of works is just how varied they are in effect.

Reform I is particularly prone to shifts that are not always immediately recognizable, complicated by dizzying alternations of black and white lines against a gray background. There is a more tightly knit feel to it, as the curved sections moving up the center give the illusion of weaving or braiding together, even though they barely touch. In Reform II, the scalloped edges are more immediately evident, as its forms, here in solid colors, contrast with the white background, giving an overall more open and delicate appearance. Light seems to slip through the cracks between rows—like translucent window blinds. The image’s symmetry is most apparent along its lower edge, where the left and right columns—consisting of an almost, but not quite full-spectrum rainbow and grayscale, respectively—meet in a dark shade that seems identical in one moment and slightly off in the next.

Through such moments of visual fluctuation, Walsh’s paintings foreground perception itself as a process of assembling. Assembly, then, becomes an open instruction, at once methodical and intuitive: less a linear path than one that loops, distorts, breaks off, and forms again. It’s through this repetition that even the slightest shifts become possible. Subtle indications of light and shadow, interplays of figure and ground, and flexible forms and structures offer an immersive labyrinth for interactive and meditative engagement. Like catching flickers of our own neural rhythms—otherwise imperceptible patterns that shape how we see—we encounter an assembly of systems, bodies, and relations of which we, too, are a part.

 
Text by Julianne Cordray