Danny McDonald
Fire Sale on Earth
"Fire Sale on Earth" is the first solo show in Italy by American artist Danny McDonald. The exhibition includes selected pieces produced between 2010 and the present day. McDonald’s sculptural narratives are set on pedestals, shelves or hung on walls. Each scenario is the result of a precarious assemblage of figurines, props, souvenirs and found objects.
Danny McDonald has long been interested in major and minor heroes and villains, staples of postwar American consumer culture. These figures are repurposed by the artist in ways that complicate their prescribed roles and spotlight their laughable standing.
In the Trump era, grotesque levels of environmental destruction, scandalous plots, distortions and diversion tactics have tested our resistance to accommodating abuse and to the normalization of violence, obscenity and dehumanization.
Some of the characters depicted in the new pieces include Santa Claus on a polar bear rug, a monstrous octopus attacking the Statue of Liberty, a Borg drone breaking into Fort Knox, the Tin Man of Oz in a decimated forest, a shattered Wall Street Bull tumbling down a section of model railroad track, and the Marlboro Man. These figures look startled and spaced-out. Their poses are unseemly and their behavior unprincipled as they linger at the edge of certain doom.
Danny McDonald was born in Los Angeles and lives and works in New York. Recent shows include "Search Parameters," Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin (2018), "The Beads & Other Objects," Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (2017), and "Male Moments," House Of Gaga, Mexico City (2014).
All images courtesy the artist, Ordet and Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin. Ph: Nicola Gnesi
