Dan Devine is a contemporary artist whose sculpture, installations, drawings and photographs explore the relationship between interior and exterior spaces. His work investigates reversals of space to examine our relationship to technology and nature. As a former motocross racer, Devine combines a fascination for vehicles and machines parts with a reverence for the natural world. Notable projects include Dan Devine’s inside-out cars, sheep farm and concrete castings formed in the space between crashed vehicles.
Dan Devine is Chair of the Sculpture Department at Hofstra University where he was also the Director of the Rosenberg Gallery for over twenty year. For over four decades, his work has been exhibited internationally in galleries and museums and has been reviewed in major publications. He lives and works in Columbia County, NY.
2022 The Fifth Revolution, Thompson Giroux Gallery, Chatham, NY
2019 Impact, Thompson Giroux Gallery, Chatham, NY
2018 Dan Devine: Inside Out NASCAR, ICEHOUSE Project Space, Sharon, CT
2014 Sheep Farm, The Fields Sculpture Park Art Omi, Ghent, NY.
2011 Dan Devine Inside Out, Art in Buildings, Time Equities, New York, NY
2010 Dan Devine, Incident Report, Hudson, NY
2007 Sheep Farm, The Fields Sculpture Park, Ghent, NY
2006 Inside Out NASCAR, Pierogi Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2003 Dan Devine, Hofstra Museum, Hempstead, NY
2002 This Conversation May Be Recorded for Training Purposes, Pierogi, Brooklyn, NY
2001 Inside Out Snowman, Davis and Hall Gallery, Hudson, NY
1998 Inside Out Car, Pierogi, Brooklyn, NY
1993 The Secret of Las Meninas, Public Art Fund Commission, MetroTech Center, Brooklyn, NY
1992 Solid Space, Dooley Le Cappellaine Gallery, New York, NY
1991 Dan Devine, Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT
2021 Winter Over? curated by George Spencer, Joyce Goldstein Gallery, Chatham, NY and TSL Hudson, Hudson, NY
Wall Power, Tanja Grunert Salon, Hudson, NY
2020 Space LAB, curated by Julie Torres and Ellen Letcher, Collarworks, Troy, NY
2018 True North, LABspace, Hillsdale, NY
2017 En Masse 2017, Thompson Giroux Gallery, Chatham, NY
2016 Bedfellows, curated by Susan Jennings, LABspace, Hillsdale NY
2015 Foodshed, curated by Amy Lipton, CR10, Linlithgo, NY
2015 Nomad Gallery, Joyce Goldstein, Chatham, NY and Kenneth Young, Austerlitz, NY
2014 Search Portrait, Thompson Giroux Gallery, Chatham, NY
2012-13 Green Acres, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH, American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Washington, D.C. and the Arlington Art Center, Arlington, VA
2006 Eat My Dust, South Eastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, NC
2004 Pierogi A Go-Go, Pierogi, Brooklyn, NY
2004 Working in Brooklyn, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
2001-03 Surrounding Interiors: Views Inside the Car, curated by Judith Hoos Fox, Davis Museum, Wellesley, MA, NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, Fort Lauderdale, FL and Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, MN
2000 Five Sculptors, curated by Joe Amrhein, Long Island University, Brooklyn, NY
Mis-Understanding, Begane Grond, Utrecht, Holland
2011 Opening Exhibition, Thompson Giroux Gallery, Chatham, NY
2010 Bibliofilia, curated by K.K. Kozik, Hotchkiss Library of Sharon Connecticut.
2008 Dead Center, Dan Devine and Eugenio Dittborn, Western Exhibitions, Detroit, MI
2007 Red Badge of Courage, curated by Omar Lopez Chahoud, Newark, NJ
2005 Modified, The Arts Center, Troy, NY
2003 Sharjah Biennial 6, Sharjah Biennial, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
Brooklyn Artists, Bernard Toale Gallery, Boston, Mass.
2001 Brooklyn 718, curated by Dominique Nahas and Michael Rush, Palm Beach Institute for Contemporary Art, Palm Beach, FL
1999 Fairy-Tales, curated by Denise Carvalho, Center for Metamedia, Plasy, Czech Republic
1999 Brooklyn, New Work, The Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio
Dysfunctional Sculpture, Center Galleries, Detroit, Michigan
Rage For Art, Pierogi, Brooklyn, NY
Permanent Resident, curated by Odili Odita part of Paradise 8, Exit Art/The First World, New York, NY
Chocolate Kingdom, curated by Leslie Brack, The Work Space, New York, NY
Heavy, Roebling Hall, Brooklyn, NY
Outer Boroughs, White Columns, New York, NY
1997 Redefinition’s: A View From Brooklyn, Main Art Gallery, California State, Fullerton, CA
Current Undercurrent: Working in Brooklyn, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY
Shadow Traffic curated by Suzanne Joelson, E.S. Van Dam Gallery, New York, NY
Road Show '97, Bronwyn Keenan Gallery, New York, NY
Making Art History, Albany Center Gallery at Ten Broeck Mansion, Albany, NY
1996 Brookworld, organized by Cindy Tower, condemned building, New York, NY
Body, Trace, Memory, Eighth Floor Gallery, New York, NY
Scratch: Benefit for Thread Waxing Space, organized by Mel Chin, New York, NY
Benefit for BLAST, BLAST, New York, NY
From the MAB Library, AC projectroom, New York, NY
1994 A Life of Secrets, curated by Kim Jones, AC projectroom, New York, NY
Recollection, Tai Ming Moy, New York, NY
Site Seeing, Bardamu Gallery, New York, NY
Life/Boat, curated by Robert Mahoney, The Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
Sign Language, City Without Walls, Newark, NJ
Kirili, Devine, Silverthorne, Stockholder, West, Gallerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, France
Devine, Kirili, Silverthorne, Stux Gallery, New York, NY
1993 On the Road, Horodner/Romley Gallery, New York, NY
Underlay, curated by Paul Bloodgood and Gavin Brown, 5 Renwick St., New York, NY
Twisted State, 80 Washington St., New York, NY
Jours Tranquilles a Clichy, Paolo Goyannes, Paris, France and New York, NY
1992 Value, Dooley leCappelaine Gallery, New York, NY
1991 Abstract Information, curated by Ellen Handy, Sacred Heart University, Bridgeport, CT and Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
Animation and Ornament, curated by Stephen Westfall, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY and SUNY Potsdam, Potsdam, NY
1990 Electrified Aura, curated by Robert C. Morgan Nahan Contemporary, New York, NY
1989 The Milky Way, curated by Stephen Westfall, Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1988 John Davis Gallery, New York, NY
1987 Photomannerisms, curated by Klaus Ottmann, Lawrence Oliver Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Sub-Industrial Sculpture curated by Bill Arning, White Columns, New York, NY
Hyperspaces curated by Klaus Ottmann and Leslie Tonkonow, Art City, New York, NY
1986 Transformations curated by Stephen Westfall, Richard Green Gallery, New York, NY
1985 Exhibition and Lecture, Four Walls, Hoboken, NJ
Invitational Exhibition, A.I.R., New York, NY
1984 Landscape Without Cow, collaboration with Stefan Roloff, Helen Shlien Gallery, Boston, MA
Urban Image/Countryside Views, The University Art Gallery, University of New Hampshire, Dunham, NH
Mural, Kamakazi, New York, NY
1983 Terminal New York, Brooklyn Army Terminal, Brooklyn, NY
Combinations, Gallery NAGA, Boston, MA
1981 New England Relief, De Cordova Museum, Lincoln, MA
Four Photographers: Views and Fragments, Helen Shllen Gallery, Boston, MA
Photo Collage, Treat Gallery, Bates College, Lewiston, Maine
Fort Point Artists, Boston City Hall Gallery, Boston, MA
2008-19 Gallery Director, Rosenberg Gallery, Hofstra University, New York
2010 Settling Into Nature, Photographs by Mikael Levin. Hofstra Museum
1994-2005 Gallery Director, Rosenberg Gallery, Hofstra University, New York
2000 Chair, History of Art and Architecture, Twentieth Congress, Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences, Washington, D.C. August, 2000
1999 Historical Misrepresentation at the Guggenheim-BMW, The Art of the Motorcycle Exhibition. Essay published in Art Criticism, volume 15, number 1, 1999.
1998 22/21 Vision. Hofstra Museum, Hempstead, NY
1995 Grounded, Art Omi Annual Outdoor Sculpture Invitational, Art Omi, Ghent, NY
2019 Maine, Stephen, Dan Devine’s Art of Destruction. Hyperallergic, 13 Apr. 2019
https://hyperallergic.com/494724/dan-devine-impact-thompson-giroux-gallery.
Farrell Okamura, Sara, What We Leave Behind. The Greylock Glass, 7 Apr. 2019
https://www.greylockglass.com/2019/04/07/dan-devine-what-we-leave-behind.
2012 Spaid, Sue. Green Acres: Artists Farming Fields, Greenhouses and Vacant Lots. Contemporary Arts Center, 2012, pp. 3, 7, 52, 109, 111, 164(illustration), 169.
Bua, Matt and Maximillian Goldfarb. Architectural Inventions: Visionary Drawings. Lawrence King Publishing, 2012, p. 192 (illustration).
2011 Rubinstein, Raphael. Dan Devine Inside Out. Time Equities Inc. Art-In-Buildings, 2011.
2006 Schmerler, Sarah. “Trans-Nascar.” The New York Times, 26 Mar. 2006, section 2, p. 2.
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/arts/transnascar.html.
Kalm, James. “Dan Devine and Ward Kelly.” The Brooklyn Rail, Apr. 2006, p. 3.
https://brooklynrail.org/2006/04/artseen/dan-devine-and-ward-shelley-at-pierogi.
2004 Kotik, Charlotta and Tumelo Mosaka. Open House: Working in Brooklyn. Brooklyn Museum, 2004, p. 64 (illustration)
Baird, Daniel. “Open House: Working in Brooklyn.” The Brooklyn Rail, May 2004.
https://brooklynrail.org/2004/05/art/open-house-working-in-brooklyn.
2003 Volk, Gregory. “Big Brash Brooklyn.” Art in America, Sep. 2003, p. 97.
Wilkin, Karen. “Open House: Working in Brooklyn.” The Journal, 2003.
2003 Rubinstein, Raphael. “Dan Devine at Hofstra Museum.” Art in America, Nov. 2003, p. 170.
Plagens, Peter. Dan Devine: from the inside out. HOFSTRARTS, 2003. The Brooklyn Rail, Early Summer 2002.
https://brooklynrail.org/2002/07/artseen/this-conversation-may-be-recorded-for-training-purposes.
2001 Fox, Judith Hoos. Surrounding, Interiors. 2wice, vol. 5, num. 2, pp. 14-15 (illustration).
2001 Odita, Odili. “Donald, Dan Devine.” Flash Art, Jan.-Feb. 2001, p. 106.
Fleisher, Noah. “Simply Devine.” Traconic Newspapers 4 January 2001, Sect. C pp. 1-2
Jaeger, William. “Reassembled visions.” Times Union, Albany, NY 28 January 2001.
2000 Mahoney, Robert. “Five Sculptors.” Timeout New York, 14-21 September 2000, p. 108.
Smith, Roberta. “Stretching the Definition of Sculpture.” The New York Times, 28 Jul. 2000, p. 29.
https://www.nytimes.com/2000/07/28/arts/art-review-stretching-definitions-of-outdoor-sculpture.html.
1999 Smith, Roberta, ‘Rage for Art (Pierogi Reborn).” The New York Times, 19 Feb. 1999, p. 37.
https://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/19/arts/art-in-review-rage-for-art-pierogi-reborn.html.
Cotter, Holland. “Changes Aside, SoHo Is Still Very Much SoHo.” The New York Times, 12 Feb. 1999, p. 37.
https://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/12/arts/art-review-changes-aside-soho-is-still-very-much-soho.html.
“Paradise 8.” The New Yorker, 8 Mar. 1999, p. 14
Reid, Calvin. “Dan Devine at Pierogi.” Art in America, Feb. 1999, p. 112.
Kotik, Charlotta. “Peer Reviews (Highlights of 1998),” ARTnews, Jan.1999, p. 99.
Volk, Gregory. “The Chelsea Alternative.” Flash Art, Summer 1999, p. 68.
Tysh, George. “Thing ain’t what they used to be: from Center Galleries, a breath of dysfunctional air.” Metro Times Detroit, 8 September 1999.
Sterin, Jerry. “New exhibit is turned inside out: Brooklyn artist transforms a VW.” The Cincinnati Post, 16 September 1999.
1998 “Inside Out Car.” The World Today. CNN Television, 26 and 27, May 1998.
http://www.cnn.com/US/9805/26/insideout.car/.
“Dan Devine.” The New Yorker, 18 May 1998, pp. 18, 20.
Volk, Gregory. “Outside In.” How to Turn Your Car Inside Out, Pierogi 2000, 1998.
1995 Cameron, Dan. “Grounded.” ART/OMI Ledig House 1995. Art Omi, 1995.
1994 Myers, Terry R. “Dan Devine.” The New Art Examiner, March 1995.
1993 M.N. “Exposition de Sculptures.” Le Figero, 28, December 1993, Paris.
Myers, Terry R. “Interview with Dan Devine and Alain Kirili.” Le Journal de Expositions, Paris.
1992 Mashech, Joseph. “Dan Devine.” Art in America, Jan. 1992, p. 121.
1991 Myers, Terry R. “Dan Devine” Lapiz Oct. 1991, p. 84.
1990 Morgan, Robert C. Electrified Aura. Nahan Contemporary, 1990.
1989 Westfall, Stephen. The Milky Way, Shoshana Wayne Gallery, 1989.
Westfall, Stephen, “Dan Devine.” Art in America April 1989, p. 269.
1988 Handy, Ellen. “Dan Devine and Devin Dougherty.” Arts Oct. 1988.
1987 Ottmann, Klaus. “Photomannerisms.” Flash Art, Nov/Dec. 1987, pp. 71-2.
Temin, Christine. “Oases of calm not just illusion.” The Boston Globe 15 January 1987, p. 80.
1986 Daniels, Demetria. “It was a Hot Time In Old Downtown (Ninth Street, To be Exact). Downtown Magazine 18 June 1986, p.8-A.
1983 Taylor, Robert. “Three for the Show.” The Boston Globe 14 April 1983.
Temin, Christine. “Some of This and That.” The Boston Globe 24 February 1983.
1982 Taylor, Robert. “Transcendental Car Hoods by Dan Devine.” The Boston Globe 24 Aug. 1982, p. 39.
1996 Public Art Fund, Roots and Wings project, New York, NY
1993 Public Art Fund, Metrotech Center, outdoor sculpture commission, New York, NY
1990 Pollock/Krasner Foundation, Artist’s Support Grant
New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for Sculpture
1985-87 Bard Grant, Full Tuition for MFA Degree
Art Omi
deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park
Francis J. Greenburger Collection
Hofstra University Museum of Art
University of New Hampshire at Dover
1995 - Present Member, Board of Directors, Art Omi International Artist Residency, Ghent, New York
1994 - Present Professor of Fine Art, Department of Fine Arts, College of Liberal Arts, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY
MFA, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
The Fifth Revolution presents a series of new works by contemporary artist Dan Devine. These sculptures made of molded and stitched leather with motorcycle parts present a confluence of Devine's personal history and artistic practice. Devine’s new work encourages an urgent rumination on the implications of the emerging fifth industrial revolution and its living machines.
The choice of leather and motorcycle parts derives from two periods of Devine’s pre-artistic career: first as a competitive motocross racer in both America and Europe and later as a leather artisan at Jamie Jacob’s leather shop on Haight Street in San Francisco during the height of the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. Devine employs these personally-significant materials to explore his career-long interest in recording objects and reversing conceptual boundaries. In earlier bodies of work, Devine had applied such tactics to blur the division of internal/external with his Inside-Out series(including his well-known Inside Out Cars) and of watching/watched with his Surveillance Sculptures series. In The Fifth Revolution, Devine turns his attention to the eroding boundary of biological/technological.
For these sculptures, Devine cut commercially produced cowhides and formed them by molding the leather pieces around motorcycle parts. Devine utilizes the unique properties of cowhide to produce simultaneous positive and negative records of the engulfed machinery. The haunted impressions left by the absented machine parts act as a memento memori, reminders of the fragile, machine-like systems that keep us alive.
These molded-leather records also echo Devine’s earlier work, where techniques such as frottage and photography are used to produce an object's negative, or reversal. The sculptures of The Fifth Revolution not only offer tentative unions of flesh and metal, but also subtle recordings of the uneasiness of unions in our own time: both physical social proximity as well as the increasing presence of technologies within humans. The show's title, The Fifth Revolution,alludes to this development. Scholars refer to the fifth industrial revolution as the epoch when humans and their technology finally merge. While such medical promises as laboratory-grown human organs and neurologically responsive artificial limbs might seem like the fulfillment of a utopian fantasy, the shadow of such developments such as AI-enabled weapons and technological behavior control should give us pause to wonder how the fifth industrial revolution will codify.
When thinking of Devine’s new work alongside such artificial aides, these sculptures seem to offer an emotional prosthesis for our own time: providing an experience of coming together when such an event feels almost impossible. Devine’s biomorphic sculptures possess a sense of sexuality though not explicit nor pornographic. Rather they reference sexuality as the union of things, the marrying of opposites: man-made and natural, organic and inorganic, inside and outside, hard and soft, living and dead.
At the center of The Fifth Revolution is Rider, the largest sculpture of the exhibition. The 350cc twin-engine JAWA 350 used in Rider offers a direct reference to Devin’s history as a motorcycle racer: while competing in international motocross races, Devine was sponsored by JAWA, a Czechoslovakian motorcycle made on the other side of Iron Curtain by a state-controlled communist manufacturer. In our contemporary age, the profound anxiety of an American rider racing successfully on a communist-produced bike may elude many of us, but at its time in the 1960’s, this uneasy pairing made Devine a competitor non grata amongst many of his peers.
The motorcycle of Rider has been plucked and stripped of all its mechanical parts and then painted a fleshy oxblood red (which also happens to be the racing color of Czech motorcycles). The motorcycle frame is then wrapped in molded leather, achieving Devine’s long sought after inside-out motorcycle. The challenge of the inside out motorcycle stems from the fact, as Devine illuminates, that “a motorcycle is already inside out.” And so Devine employs his tactic of reversal, inverting not the physical structure of the motorcycle, but rather the relationship to the motorcycle, reversing the dichotomy of man and machine to allude to a single hybrid entity, the ultimate ambition and anxious phantom at the center of the fifth industrial revolution: the living machine.
This inversion of the dichotomy of man and machine is one of many reversals that populate Devine’s oeuvre, ranging from his plaster casts of the space between wrecked vehicles to his 10-year project of raising a flock of sheep. Devine employs these reversals to make us question our assumptions. As Devine himself attests, “Once art starts solving problems, it becomes illustrative. If anything, art creates problems. It asks a question about the world.”
In The Fifth Revolution, Dan Devine has produced a new series of sculptures that uneasily pair man and machine, couplings that seem haunting harbingers of an inevitable future that make us pause and ask, “Where are we going?” And it is this ability of Devine — to raise necessary questions and bring together such unlikely and even conflicting elements — that make him a necessary and important artist for our own seemingly irreconcilable and disconcerting times.