Daniel Senise's artistic practice revolves around paintings that explore the balance and weight of space with the presence and absence of everyday objects. He frequently incorporates impressions of floors, ground residues, iron dust, lead objects, or fabrics into his canvases. Some of his paintings have densely worked surfaces, while others have very thin layers of paint. Although the viewer may not identify the paintings within the space, the architectural component of the creation shines through, as if manipulating space and its interaction with art.
Senise has participated in many art biennials, including the 1985, 1989, 1998, and 2010 editions of the São Paulo Biennial; the Havana Biennial in 1986 and the Venice Biennale in 1990, among others.
The artist, known for rewriting the narrative of painting, sometimes replaces the canvas with photographic images. His characteristic post-painting narrative, along with his passion for art history and architecture, is amalgamated into photographs with unusual angles of decaying buildings, on which he applies layers of debris recovered from the same locations where the images were photographed.
At Rosewood São Paulo, Senise's artworks speak of memory, spatiality, representation, and materiality, unfolding into photographic images and surfaces. These photographs substitute the canvas with images of memorial spaces, such as the former Maternidade Matarazzo. The photos were taken or directed by Senise, in collaboration with photographer Mauro Restiffe. The photography acts as a background or stage that activates the viewer's imagination, portraying layers of temporal overlap, configuring a discussion about the "corporality" of matter, representation, image, reality, and existence. The materials and objects collected from the photographed spaces are juxtaposed, creating layers of depth and contrast between figures and background in two and three-dimensionality. These are narratives about the world and the place of the real and the virtual today.
In addition to the two artworks—photographs using collages of elements found in the abandoned building of the former maternity in the Matarazzo complex—Daniel Senise also worked on a memorial art piece that he started during the Creative Invasion in 2014. In this current work, a creation of continuous act, the artist kept some 'windows' open to show the 'skin' of the different historical stratifications of the corridor in the maternity building. The result resembles abstract images, a kind of spontaneous graffiti, in the artistic style that Jean Dubuffet, Antoni Tàpies, or Brassaï would not have denied.
Find out more at: danielsenise.com
Represented by the gallery: nararoesler.art/artists/73-daniel-senise