I make assemblage-based sculptures that are categorized into veins of work. Each focuses on a distinctive narrative, material makeup, procedure, and form. My sculptures preserve my passion for tennis, Italian-American heritage, memories of my family's former coat manufacturing enterprise, and the highly dysfunctional yet loving home life I experienced with my older brother and hoarder parents in a cramped one-bedroom apartment all situated in the City of Newburgh, NY. Through making, I explore notions of Italian-Americanness, embellished imaginings of loved ones, aspects of my post-industrial hometown, and more through the use of diverse yet specific materials that make up my life and converge into multifaceted vignettes.
My work ranges from intimate objects to large-scale constructions. I gather materials that have fascinated me since I was a child, such as discarded “clinker” bricks, deer bones, and water caltrops that are present in my local ecosystem. Once I bring these elements into my workspace, I often combine them with carved wood, ceramic, and cast aluminum components that I produce en masse. The results are entities, essentially portraits and self-portraits, that embody everything that is meaningful to me. I fashion unique tools, invent procedures, and implement surface treatments derived from substances that relate to the body, such as lipstick, hosiery, marzipan, and urinal cake. These materials evoke specific memories, which I immortalize with a thorough drenching of various resins and sealants.
I decadently apply topical treatments to make objects appear both alien and familiar by playing with color combinations, experimenting with textures, and exploring the ways light reflects and absorbs off of the various surfaces. Jasper Johns’s notion of taking an object, doing something to it and then doing something else to it is a procedure that I push far beyond its logical conclusion. My sculptures often possess asymmetrical balletic silhouettes or explosive celestial shapes. These works encompass the full spectrum of emotions I experience throughout the production process. I consider a sculpture complete when it yields a commanding presence and aura.
In tandem with my sculptural output, I’ve always made drawings and works on paper, graphite, pen and ink, watercolor, collage, and more. The works on paper exist in a realm that the sculptures do not, creating dreamlike scenes with motifs often inspired by tender observations, sex, the notion of time, death, sunlight, or a memorable film scene. Whether it's my fastidious hand cut collages, agitating the paper pulp around an image to yield a fuzzy dimensional texture, or making ink drawings in the rain as a treatment to warp the paper and bleed the image, my personal hand is the end result.
Daniel Giordano (b. 1988, Poughkeepsie, NY) is an artist based in Newburgh, NY. Daniel earned his MFA from the University of Delaware in 2016. He participated in the AIM Fellowship at the Bronx Museum of the Arts in 2021 and EmergeNYC fellowship at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics in 2015. Giordano’s work has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY (2024); MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA (2023); Turley Gallery, Hudson, NY (2023); JDJ, New York, NY (2023). His work has been included in recent group exhibitions at High Noon, New York, NY (2024); Grimm, New York, NY (2024); The Bronx Museum of the Arts, The Bronx, NY (2024); Helena Anrather, New York, NY (2023). Giordano’s work has been featured in The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, Sculpture Magazine, and Cultured Magazine, among others.
@danielgiordano
danieljgiordano@gmail.com
“His sculptures speak of apocalypse and decadence, flushed with the impishness that is vital to surviving chaos, even reveling in it.”
“His work is startling, he negotiates issues of taste with nonchalance, allowing high culture to mix easily with the popular and the mundane.”
“That Giordano confronts us with such a visual no-holds-barred screed of who he is can help us awaken to who we are as human beings.”
“Giordano’s delirious tinkering with the glory and gore of his free-style mashups produces an extravaganza all its own.”
“The details are strangely specific, as in dreams, which is due to the care the artist gives to the long multistage process that each piece demands; casting, varnishing, baking, soaking, drying, plating, gilding, and more. Each step tweaks the whole into a category specific to the artist, while it further nudges the created form towards absurdity, or perhaps the sublime.”