Daniel Turner (b. 1983 in Portsmouth, VA; lives and works in New York) works primarily in sculpture, involving the creation or manipulation of materials, objects, and environments into tactile or atmospheric forms. These forms are often characterized by a specific response to an environment under a controlled set of processes. This approach enables Turner to base form on transposition, preserving a sensory link to geographical locations, cultural associations, and human contact. These elements appear in earlier works in which an entire waiting room is cast into a series of solid bars, a psychiatric facility is burnished to a darkened stain against an exhibition wall, or a cafeteria is dissolved across the expanse of a floor.
The artist has sourced materials from sites including American power plants, Japanese chemical tankers, and Belgian prisons. In 2019, Turner extracted one metric ton of hospital beds from the Vinnitsa Regional Psychoneurological Hospital in Vinnitsa, Ukraine, which were archived, melted, and recast into two solid forms. For his solo exhibition at Kunsthalle Basel (2022), Turner extracted elements from three sites in the Basel region that triangulate architecture, the pharmaceutical industry, and psychology. These materials included several tons of heating radiators and oil tanks removed from the interiors of the chemical plant BASF, the pharmaceutical labs of Novartis, and the former psychiatric facility Holdenweild. Material excavated from each site was melted into minimal forms and burnished into the surface of large-scale works on canvas.
Daniel Turner has participated in numerous institutional exhibitions including Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; The Chinati Foundation, United States; Musée de l’Orangerie, France; Palais de Tokyo, France; The Pinchuk Art Center, Ukraine; Kunstmuseum Krefeld, Germany; Museen Haus Esters und Haus Lange, Germany; Musée des Arts Contemporains Grand Hornu, Belgium; The Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France; Muzeul de Artă Cluj-Napoca, Romania; The Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Poland; The Mori Art Museum, Japan; and Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Belgium.
Turner’s works are held in private and public collections including SMAK Ghent, Belgium; Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland; Centre Pompidou, France; FRAC Bretagne, France; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France; ICA Miami, United States; and Musée des Arts Contemporains Grand Hornu, Belgium, among others.
