03.19.2022

Daniel Long
Once I’ve Poured the Concrete

NOON Projects is honored to present Once I’ve Poured the Concrete, a new body of work by Daniel Long. This show deals with themes of transformation, permission, queer blessings, living with HIV, and glimpses into the interior.

During the pandemic, Long’s studio practice provided a place of safety to explore his own and the world's great transformation. From this journey inward came this series of paintings of architectural spaces from paused memories and iPhone photos taken in dimly lit hallways, bathhouses, foyers, and open doorways.

These interiors depict quotidian yet private scenes of queer life; the view of a tiled floor from the waiting room of a sexual health clinic, a last look back into an apartment building after leaving a hookup, two lovers together in bed with one gazing into a phone on a dating app, and a red-lit video arcade with a series of open doors.

The open doors are thresholds, liminal spaces for one to pass from one side to the other. Long creates a pause in these spaces and shares a perspective from both the inside looking out and the outside looking in.

In the series of shell paintings, the shells levitate to the surface and at the same time, represent human-like figures with a mysterious private interior not visible to the outside world. Long gives us a glimpse inside these private spaces in his paintings depicting dream-like compositions of airbrushed male figures, butterflies, tropical foliage, and angels. Within these surreal environments inside the secret world of the shell, the artist explores the shadow side and the tender interior so rarely share with the outside world.

Long’s paintings celebrate queer life where his version of self is not judged, but acknowledged, and celebrated.

Daniel Long (born 1984, Memphis, Tennessee) is a visual artist that explores the human experience with themes of intimacy, partnership, pleasure, and connection deep inside of queerness. Working primarily in painting, Long’s creative practice also includes an array of output including apparel, print editions, and sculptures. His studio practice functions as a way to celebrate the act of painting and provides a stage of permission to celebrate. It is a context and situation for celebration itself. Long received his MFA in Visual Studies from Pacific NW College of Art in 2013 and BFA from Memphis College of Art in 2006. He has shown at Artist Curated Projects and Panel (Los Angeles), Nationale and PMoMA (Portland).

Text Editing: Laura O’Quin
Images by Ruben Diaz

Exhibition

March 19 – April 23, 2022

Opening March 19, 2022
6–9 pm