Danny Avidan
Danny Avidan is a painter born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1989. His large, physical canvases are built up in plaster, paint and pencil, and the figures that live in them never stay still for long: bodies take shape, sink back into the surface and return in another form.
Working in the space between figuration and abstraction, Avidan treats every painting as a record of its own making. Earlier versions of the image remain buried under new layers, so each work carries the time it took to become what it is. The result is raw and tender at once, close to a self-portrait and close to myth.
Mixed media on canvas, 150 × 180 cm
About Danny Avidan
At the centre of Avidan’s work is the tension between form and formlessness. On canvas and on paper, human figures appear as brief presences in fields of scarred colour – chalky whites, soft pinks, ochre and deep reds – drawn with a quick, searching line and partly covered again by the next layer.
The figures are rarely portraits of anyone in particular. They read as states of mind, memories or archetypes, and at the same time they work as self-portraits that mirror the painter’s own movements and desires. Like the artist, they seem to be pushing something out from within, trying to become more than they are. They stretch, come apart and melt into their surroundings.
In recent years his work has been shown in Berlin, Milan, Paris, Venice and Barcelona. In 2025 he opened the solo exhibition In The Worldbreath All Is Wave with Galleria Alessandro Albanese in Matera, Italy.
Building, Erasing, Rebuilding
A painting by Avidan begins directly on the canvas. The movement of his body and the flow of the paint decide the first image. Then the scene collapses: he scrapes, covers and paints over, lets plaster and pigment bury what was there, and draws again in pencil on the new surface.
These cycles of construction and erasure are the core of his practice. Traces of earlier states stay visible – a face under a white veil, a limb cut through by a later gesture – and turn the canvas into a layered archive. Creating and destroying become two sides of the same act.
Every painting by Danny Avidan is both a burial ground and a birthplace: what disappears beneath the surface becomes the ground for what comes next.
Myth and Transformation
Avidan’s work is shaped by his studies in mythology and comparative religion, which he approaches as ways into the collective unconscious and into the human wish to overcome our own limits. Stories of transformation, renewal and loss from many cultures run through the paintings, together with images from art history.
The references are never illustrated literally. They surface in the titles of works and exhibitions – the Greek myth of Acis and Galatea, the cyclops Polyphemus, the Dionysian sparagmos – and are absorbed into a visual language that stays open and intuitive. The paintings move freely between the personal and the collective, between self-portrait, emotional landscape and mythic space.
Mixed media on canvas, 200 × 180 cm
Works on Paper
Alongside the large canvases, Avidan works on paper in a smaller, more intimate format. The line is freer here. Drawing, paint and torn, layered sheets are combined into collage-like pieces where faces and bodies drift in and out of view.
The works on paper show the same process as the paintings at close range – building up, taking away and starting again – and offer a direct look at how his figures come into being.
Solo Exhibitions
- 2025 In The Worldbreath All Is Wave – Galleria Alessandro Albanese / Matera, Italy
- 2024 Sparagmos – 175 Rue du Temple / Paris, France
- 2022 La tragédie d’Acis et Galatée – Salle culturelle du métro / Milan, Italy
- 2020 Tantava – Bark Gallery / Berlin, Germany
- 2019 The Younger Dryas – Bark Gallery / Berlin, Germany
Group Exhibitions and Art Fairs
- 2025 Evanescentia – Escat Gallery / Barcelona, Spain
- 2025 Círculo Ecuestre | By Invitation – Escat Gallery / Barcelona, Spain
- 2025 ArtVerona – Galleria Alessandro Albanese / Verona, Italy
- 2025 Swab Barcelona – Escat Gallery / Barcelona, Spain
- 2024 The Contours of Otherness – Museo Ebraico di Venezia / Venice, Italy
- 2022 Le Cose Che Accadono – Palazzo Montevecchio / Fano, Italy
- 2022 Feria Material – Andrea Festa Fine Art / Mexico City, Mexico
- 2021 Roma Arte in Nuvola – Andrea Festa Fine Art / Rome, Italy
- 2021 Swab Barcelona – Andrea Festa Fine Art / Barcelona, Spain
Press: interview in C-print Magazine.
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Danny Avidan
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