Daniel M. Olsen is a maker based in Austin Texas. His work has been exhibited in solo shows at the Ten in One Gallery in Chicago, Illinois; The Living Arts of Tulsa in Tulsa, Oklahoma; and in Lima, Peru at the Instituto Cultural Peruano Norteamericano and The Galleria de La Municipalidad de Miraflores.

Olsen's work is intended as a vehicle for both himself and the viewer to ask broad epistemological questions. He feels that examining the way in which we think about things, how we come to conclusions, and how we communicate will shed light on blind spots we all carry. His work questions the photographic image as a representation, object, product, and its relationship to text. Landscape imagery often provides a stage for ideas to unfold. Our relationship to landscape, and to each other, is subject matter used for these investigations. Olsen employs a variety of strategies to investigate issues, and these efforts render distinctly different image series. This diversity provides multiple points of view to him and viewer that, hopefully, create meaningful conversation.

The work presented here is recently completed and includes new initiatives, as well as earlier ideas that have been revisited and expanded.

A resume is available on request.   danolsen222@gmail.com

STATEMENT

Text+Image

Telling people what they should think never seems very productive: take for example the assumed dichotomy between Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter activists. I feel that the best I can do is ask people to think critically about how they come to conclusions. If one is rigorous with how they think about the issue at hand, and honest with themselves (two lofty goals), I feel problematic preconceptions would fade and help us move toward solutions.

This work is a speck of resistance to the prioritization of controversy over cognitive process. In the Text+Image work I am not focused on what is traditionally seen as the subject of an image. Instead I am interested in how the image is communicating— the way a piece of text may shift the meaning of the image or how the communicative conventions of an image might be put into question. Perhaps, in some small way, the images can shift how people think about things.

Three Books –– The photograph is inherently a representation. Digital image manipulation was designed to provide for correcting aspects of an image such as perspective. These corrections typically are done to adjust the image to be within prescribed conventions, or what is seen as correct. However, this ability can be used to other ends. Books, holy books in specific, seemed the ideal subject for images in which the rules of perspective are subtly shifted to a different kind of correct. These texts exist within a logic of their own. Like the subjects of these texts, these objects are not tied to this physical world. Reconsidering photographic assumptions may in turn encourage the reconsideration of these books. Perhaps both books and image can regain ground as meaningful ways to understand the world. By altering photographic image conventions, we may question what is correct.

A reference to Rothko should be acknowledged, even if he wouldn’t agree.

Plexi Land Logic

An image is not what it represents. As we move toward seeing what is represented, we move away from being aware of it as an image— we no longer see the image but only the representation. In this sense, images are lies. A landscape photograph tries to be a landscape. Plastic laminates try to be wood. The articulation of wood into a veneer negates its structural integrity and in doing so it transforms into an image of itself. Material combinations are seductive. It’s great fun to see how materials can combine into new forms. We see a material in a new way when juxtaposed with another material. In this investigation, these elements initiate a conversation without conclusion — conversation about the landscape and its commodification into products and architecture.

It is the process of organizing and structuring that transforms the land — and what it holds — into product. Western perspective, numerical systems and grid structures are a few of the ways in which we attempt to tame and control the landscape. The grid structures within which we live (architecture) commodify the landscape into a place of comfort for occupancy.

We don’t need more stuff, and we can’t keep pillaging the landscape to manufacture and amass more stuff. I love the refined, designed object/space, but as I collect them my guilt builds. This parallels my love/hate relationship with creating objects and spaces. I love doing it. We can’t keep doing it. These points roll around in my head, an assemblage of conviction and conflict.

Landshapes

A change of perspective may alter the way we think about land and how we use it. We intervene in the landscape with preconceived ideas about how those actions improve or utilize the land. Subsequently, our experience moving through these articulated landscape confirms the actions we have taken upon them. Finding abstraction in natural spaces asks us to reevaluate our views of nature and the “natural ideal.” By showing the processes we perform on nature from a distance, we see the scale of impact and the degree to which the human hand has marked the land. Questions emerge. Within my fascination with these forms is some degree of fear — attraction and repulsion.