Dan Allon 
Contemporary Art

 

 

 

​I am an artist, writer, musician, and teacher. This website shows projects I have had the privilege of showing in exhibitions and book fairs worldwide, as well as publishing on digital platforms and in print. My practice is diverse: graphic novels, prints and drawings, concerts, albums, installations, and sound works. My practice branches to other fields of knowledge, such as medicine, psychiatry, political science, and gender studies.

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Artist Statement 

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At the core of my artistic pursuit lies a strong desire for storytelling. I work like a writer: first comes visual and textual research, then a text is written, followed by development in the studio, resulting in a visual project that sometimes branches into performance or sound and music. I use stories from my life and the lives of my dearest, combined with historical narratives, interweaved into documentary/mockumentary new tales. I aspire to keep them humorous, grotesque, vulnerable, and universal. I use literature genres such as memoir, autobiography, historical fiction, and essays, to challenge the spectator's most fundamental perceptions about where life and art meet (in other words - "is this story about you true? Has it happened to you?" is a frequent question I get). 

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I like to describe my practice as between "putting myself on stage" and "under siege." For example, I use my medical files, military and financial documents, authentic phone calls, and archival footage, among other to create a trustworthy setting for the spectators. Sometimes, I would be the artwork itself on-site to add "authenticity." To that, I add fictional details (for example, an alternative fact that my grandmother had an affair with Franco from Spain, or that my aunt was a transgender singer in Brazil, or moving into a gallery for a week portraying a prisoner and a warden the entire time in silence), blurring hierarchies between truth and fiction. Eventually, isn't our life just the story we tell ourselves?