Daniel Domig: These Mythical Bones

Reflexion Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Austrian artist Daniel Domig on November 2nd, 2024. These Mythical Bones is Domig’s first solo presentation of his work in Asia. The work will comprise a body of new paintings, a site-specific installation of five large-scale diptychs, and video works, etc. Spanning over twenty years of painting, Domig constantly uses the body as the subject and medium. The “Bones” of the exhibition title underscores, based on the artist’s creative context, the survival of human beings underneath the fleshes, the parts of our lives that are hardened beyond life and death, yet fragilely intertwined and dependent on each other. The intrinsic tension and distortion of bones, the contact, superposition, the fusion of fleshes, and the depiction of blood vessels, organs, and macroscopic spots reveal the fragile and fiery microcosm under the skin. Carrying on the spirit and aesthetic of Francis Bacon, in the suspended time and space beneath the artist’s brushstrokes, the intimacy and pain of the human torso, lust, and absurdity are condensed in a thin, timeless membrane.

In its underscore on the sensations of the body and the invention and tension generated by its introspection and extrospection, Domig’s open-ended approach elides sketching or underpainting. This approach is a matter of touch and vision simultaneously, a subtle trace of a momentary experience that transcends time and space. Wet and dry contours, bright and melancholic tones, expressionist brushstrokes, and concern for fluidity and transparency are all intently related to the sense of body volume. The blurring concealment of figure and ground, figurative and abstract, as if the skin and pigment transformed into membranes. Thus, a multilayered, co-constructive relationship has been formed between bodies.

In painting such as How to Narrate Without a Protagonist (2023), presents a fusion of translucent blocks of color breaching the outline of the torso, revealing the contingency and plasticity of the body, as well as its interdependence. In Metaphors, Organs and Faces in Between (2024), the reinforcement on boundaries convey a certain impediment to mobility, as if the body and face are creating a swollen tension, yet each is bound in membranes. In A Gaze so close I can feel it on my Skin (2024), the distorted seeing angle causes a subtle and uncanny split in the skull, which maps both an internal state of mind and the pain of existentialism that cannot be bridged to the world beyond. In Domig’s paradoxical view of existence, recognizing people as all flesh and blood is the only hope for transcendence.

The exhibition also features a new site-specific installation that spans the exhibition space. Producing a temporary wooden structure signifies both abstract skeletal elements from paintings to construct sculptural works, and each piece within a connection towards his opened-end exploration of the processes, and infuses the spirit of the studio into the white box space. Five life-size diptychs lurk in the violence between embodiment and transcendence, the foreground on vascular lines, blocky bones, and dotted patterns seem to break down the body into decorative surfaces while simultaneously alienating and activating it. The superimposition and growth of the two paintings is a new exploration for the artist, in contrast with the bottom works, the upper pieces reveal concise, precise, and playful. The artist reaffirms the freedom and openness of the creative process and the courage to show vulnerability when it may fail, which is complemented by a quote from Samuel Beckett as “Theatre of the Absurd” who deeply influenced Domig, “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Text / Fan Yang