09 Sep 2009

Dvorak Sec Contemporary presents Dana Bell | Still(s)

Dvorak Sec Contemporary is proud to present Still(s); the debut solo exhibition of New York artist Dana Bell in Europe.

Dana Bell's paintings illuminate great moments of 20th century cinema, selected with an eye towards classical sensibility, framed with geometric symmetry. From Fellini spectacles to little-known Noir gems, Bell spotlights films that have both strong aesthetic languages and nuanced psychological trends guiding the narrative. Seizing upon this psychology and using it as an apparatus of refining, Bell transforms these distinct, disparate achievements of cinematography. She distills film stills into a shared, formalistic, intentionally limited visual language in which the guiding psychology is both instrument and corpus. For her exhibition 'Still(s)' at Dvorak Sec Contemporary, Dana Bell--armed with a formalist's vocabulary, a painfully bright palette, and a keen eye for the nuances of gesture--delves into cinema's rich history and emerges with a complex study of physicalized language, and a portal into human behavior itself.

Dana Bell, born in 1974, has participated in a number of notable exhibitions such as Metamorphic Gestures at the Chelsea Art Museum in 2008 and Forever Home at the haNnA Gallery in Tokyo. Her work was recently exhibited in New York City's prestigious Flag Art Foundation in the exhibition Re-Accession: For Sale by Owner.


Dana Bell's exhibition is the first in a series of exhibitions on display at Dvorak Sec Contemporary that will feature a selection of young, emerging artists primarily based in New York City. The artists are representative of an exciting new generation of painters and sculptors, and the planned exhibitions will provide Prague with a survey of the New York City art scene. The program for 2009/2010 keeps with the gallery's mission to bring the most current contemporary art to Prague and to draw attention to the talent and potential of young & emerging international artists.