Dana Lok at CHEWDAY’S

Artist: Dana Lok

Exhibition title: The Set of all Sets

Venue: CHEWDAY’S, London, UK

Date: November 12, 2016 – January 5, 2017

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and CHEWDAY’S, London

Note: Dana Lok: Conditional Mood by Scott Roben can be found here

Dana Lok’s paintings make an analogy between a painting and a theater set—both are visual constructions meant for viewing from a particular perspective at a particular time. These paintings provide a peek at the stage from the side, or a view of the stage before the production has started. Through this theatrical analogy, the paintings present language, representation, and knowledge as miraculous, performative activities that require the framework of a stage, not unlike tricks in a magic show.

The Set of all Sets alludes to a paradox of logic which states that a complete logical system which includes a description of its own framework will ultimately contradict itself. From the infinitely looped voice of Conjurors I & II, to the painting within a painting of Tilted Bather and Enchanted Cel, knots of self-reference and recursion abound across Lok’s paintings. These works undertake a metafictional investigation of the frameworks of painting, observation, and speech.

A catalogue accompanying the exhibition, featuring an essay by Scott Roben, is forthcoming.

Dana Lok was born in 1988 in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She has attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and is a current resident at the Sharpe-Walentas Studio program in Brooklyn, NY. Recent group exhibitions include In Place of at Miguel Abreu Gallery, Floating Point at Judith Charles Gallery, The Crack-Up at Room East, the Columbia MFA Thesis Exhibition at the Fischer Landau Center for Art, all in New York, and A Night Out of Town at Clima Gallery, Milan, Italy, where she will have a solo exhibition this spring. Dana received her MFA from Columbia University, and her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University. This is her first solo exhibition.