Dan Quintana Further Dissolves His Macabre Subjects in “Diffused”

Hi-Fructose Vol 27 featured artist Dan Quintana will debut new works this Saturday at Hashimoto Contemporary in San Francisco with “Diffused”. In addition to a new series of oil paintings, the exhibit will also feature several charcoal drawings and a largescale mural. Quintana’s work is known for his detailed images of ephemeral subjects of goddesses and demons that seem to dissolve into their surroundings. Often, his works are layered with ominous narratives and recurring personal symbolism. In the tradition of his aesthetic, “Diffused” portrays dissipating ghost-like figures in images that personify death. To suggest their dissipation, he reintroduces graphical elements as in his subjects’ hands which are drawn in bold linework and left unrendered. In his painting “Frequencies”, these elements are coupled with an overlaying of form and patterns. They take us back to his 2013 exhibition “Zero Instruments”, where haunting female figures were coupled with geometric motifs. The show title also refers to Quintana’s visual explorations of color and light in his new pieces. Quintana considers light to be a symbol of life, and here it plays a role as the foil to his darker, macabre depictions. “We see the light in these figures dispersing faintly into the open vast space until it ceases to exist,” he says. Take a look at some of the works in the show below and see “Diffused” at Hashimoto Contemporary from August 29th through September 26th, 2015.