DANIEL INGROFF: MENISCUS

Oct 20 - Nov 27, 2022

Reception: Oct 20, 6 - 8pm

SITUATIONS is pleased to present Daniel Ingroff’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, titled Meniscus. Ingroff’s paintings explore bodily relations between the subject and the outside world. The title of the show, Meniscus, refers to the curved shape a fluid makes on its surface in response to a container. Similarly, the protagonists of these paintings are reacting to pressure from their environment. The bodies depicted are permeable, with animals, plants and architecture encroaching upon the body’s territory. The subjects are in a state of “becoming” as they hybridize into other forms. A variety of responses to this violation are depicted: there is challenge, there is resignation, and there is communion.

In contrast to past exhibitions, the majority of these paintings are self-portraits. These paintings engage with the intimacy and psychology of being seen, alternating between sharing information about the artist's internal emotional life, and using the artist’s body as a stand-in for familiar experience. In “Studio Demon,” a seated figure is shown in the studio with horns, fangs, doe ears, and a single star over his head. The painting hovers somewhere between occult self-actualization and embarrassment, a feeling that permeates the act of art-making. The terms of what is considered a self-portrait are further stretched in  “X-ray,” which is a black and white portrayal of Ingroff’s dental x-ray. The actuality of the mouth as a dimensional curved shape is flattened and distorted into a 2-D oval with the sinuous fibers of the sinuses framing it. In “Eclipse,” a figure is shown reclining in bed with a shadow looming over him. The interaction between the figure and the shadow is both menacing and sexual, but also plays with spatial conditions of who is standing over whom. The shadow operates as both an index of the body and a way to double oneself. The shadow casts darkness onto the environment in a human shape, absorbing the topography of the environment into itself. 

Ingroff’s paintings are created through the application of thin layers of oil paint. His life-like renderings of the world are subtly distorted. Irregularities in the figures feel unsettling and call for repeated viewing. The palette is de-saturated, due to the utilization of a grisaille underpainting and the addition of grey to the color palette. The skin tones read as statuary, bringing these pictures into an archetypal realm. 

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DANIEL INGROFF is a Los Angeles-based artist who holds an MFA from University of California, Irvine and a BA from Pitzer College, Claremont. His work has been shown at Tyler Park Presents, LA: Night Gallery, LA; Klaus Von Nichtssagend, NY; Richard Telles Fine Art, LA; 356 S. Mission, LA; and Hunter Shaw Fine Art, LA; among others. He is represented by Tyler Park Presents in Los Angeles.