Gallery Blum & Poe Presents Modeler by Daniel Lefcourt

Lefcourt’s paintings appear to straddle both physics and metaphysics, the everyday and the mythic; creating artworks which are both whimsical and profound at once.

His use of bird’s-eye views evokes both technological omnipotence and masculine fantasies, as well as investigating the nature of images themselves – drawing upon Hanne Darboven generative systems and parametric musical scores by Iannis Xenakis as references for exploration.

Early Life and Education

Gallery Blum & Poe is proud to host Daniel Lefcourt’s inaugural solo exhibition of large-scale paintings and relief panels entitled Modeler. This show draws upon Lefcourt’s artistic process which involves making and simulation. Beginning with small accidents such as spilled water or random spots on fabric being left alone for too long before photographing from various angles to generate 3-dimensional computer models of each unique outcome, his paintings begin taking form!

Low-relief foam carvings created by Lefcourt are then filled with paint and attached to canvas, creating works that feature palimpsests of obliqueness that encourage surrender to mystery, subtly engaging weighty conceptual questions and artistic concerns. She holds an MFA from Columbia University, as well as being a faculty member at Rhode Island School of Design.

Professional Career

Lefcourt’s work addresses an array of weighty conceptual questions and artistic concerns. While seemingly minimalist in appearance, his pieces blur the lines between abstraction and representation; his process-oriented practice scrutinizes and dismantles painting through materiality, subject matter and physical space of its presentation.

Recently, he has utilized scientific and industrial imaging technologies to create abstract landscape paintings. By staining canvas and plotting lines algorithmically, these paintings evoke both maps of imaginary landforms as well as diagrams depicting them.

Mitchell-Innes & Nash in New York represents him and he has held numerous solo exhibitions as well as participating in group shows such as Blind Cut at Marlborough Gallery; Knight’s Move at Sculpture Center of Long Island City; and Subject Index at Malmo Konstmuseum.

Achievement and Honors

Since his debut show in 2004, Lefcourt’s work has been celebrated for its humor and sophistication. His signature black rock paintings–individual abstracted boulders rendered on wheat-colored canvas–reflect a noir theme that addresses contemporary painting’s relationship with abstraction and representation.

His work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions such as Blind Cut at Marlborough Gallery; The Perpetual Dialogue at Andrea Rosen, New York; Knight’s Move at Sculpture Center Long Island City; Subject Index Malmo Konstmuseum Sweden and Dia Art Foundation, Sweden as well as being included in many prestigious collections and featuring in articles published in ArtForum, Frieze, and Art in America magazines.

Lefcourt’s studio practice specializes in creating large-scale paintings. His process begins with an accidental yet carefully orchestrated event such as water or glue spilled on debris-strewn tarps being digitally photographed dozens of times from different angles before being used to manufacture low-relief foam carvings that will later be painted and attached to large canvases.

Personal Life

Daniel Lefcourt lives and works in New York. His artwork investigates the intersection between painting and technical imaging using scientific, commercial and military technologies – drawing painting into larger conflicts surrounding representational politics.

Lecturer at Rhode Island School of Design. Exhibited several solo shows including at Taxter & Spengemann Gallery in New York.

This exhibition of seven paintings and one video model shows how an artist uses simple geometric forms to generate complex visual ideas. Each painting depicts a jet-black rock shape on russet-colored raw linen. These aerial-view paintings allude to masculine fantasies of dominance as well as metaphysical and technological omnipotence; additionally, each canvas was stained before algorithmically plotted lines were traced around its outlines for landscapes that appear both diagrammatic and map-like.

Net Worth

The Sackler family fortune has been estimated at $14 billion, making them one of the wealthiest families in America, rivalling other prominent families such as Mellons and Rockefellers. Most of this fortune comes from Purdue Pharma in Connecticut where OxyContin accounts for most profits – contributing directly to over 130 deaths daily from opioid overdoses across America. Daniel Lefcourt lives in New York.