1962 Building

This installation debuted a new group of colorful abstract paintings by the New York–based artist Dan Colen (American, born 1979). Inspired by the Abstract Expressionist painters, especially Jackson Pollock (American, 1912–1956), who form the cornerstone of the Albright-Knox’s collection, Colen translates the gestures of action painting into piles, globs, and skeins of multicolored chewing gum. As Colen has said, “A lot of my work is about what’s abstract and what’s pictorial. Is it bubblegum, or is it an abstract painting using bubblegum? The energy comes from walking that line.”

However, these are much more than clever riffs on American abstract painting. They also lay bare Colen’s long-standing interest in finding beauty in the discarded and the accidental. His extraordinary investigations into materials and processes make visible the connection between high and low, and between art and everyday life. In this series of paintings, some of which were developed in only a day and others over the course of weeks, nostalgia and repulsion are intertwined; a single whiff of their Hubba Bubba scent can transport viewers out of the museum and into memories of childhood. They also recall the discarded wads of chewed gum that blemish the undersides of school desks or melt into the hot summer asphalt, only to be carried away on the bottom of a passerby’s shoe. In Shake the Elbow, Colen breathed new life into the detritus that forms the visual fabric of our world.

This exhibition was organized by Godin-Spaulding Curator & Curator for the Collection Holly E. Hughes.