DANÉ ESTES

In the paintings, layers accumulate, are covered over, scraped away, or absorbed into the surface. Earlier decisions remain present, sometimes visibly and sometimes only as residue. The finished painting becomes a record of its own making, holding what has been added, lost, and changed along the way. Works on paper draw from fragments of earlier paintings alongside images of the retina, connecting the physical act of seeing with memory and the history of the work itself. The sculptures bring a similar sense of change into three dimensions, with forms that appear to be growing, emerging, or caught between states.

The exhibition takes its title from Romeo and Juliet. During the balcony scene, Romeo says of Juliet, “Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye / Than twenty of their swords.” Her gaze poses a greater threat to him than the physical danger surrounding him, bringing attraction, vulnerability, and risk together in the image of the eye.

For Dané, the line speaks to how much of ourselves we bring to the act of seeing. We rarely encounter something without bringing our own memories, expectations, associations, and wants to it. What we notice, overlook, or recognize is shaped as much by what we carry with us as by what is actually in front of us.

This idea becomes literal in the works on paper, where images of the retina sit within surfaces made from fragments of earlier works. The eye is both an image and a way of thinking about the work: seeing is not passive or fixed, but something that changes through experience.

Transformation is therefore less a subject of the exhibition than a process running through it. Things are added, erased, recovered, and altered. What remains is not simply the final image or object, but the evidence of what came before.