Terminal A-West

Ticketed Passengers

Philadelphia artist Brian David Dennis is interested in the process of transforming common materials and as he says, "the experience of making."  Dennis creates sculptural installations using everyday things from strips of thin wood, corrugated cardboard, twist ties, colored paper to aluminum screen and sheets of glassine. He laboriously and repetitiously sands, paints, cuts, glues, joins, or layers materials to alter their original functionality. Transcendence is a word used by Dennis to describe his instinctive interest "to push the materials beyond their original context."

In several prior installations, Dennis has utilized hundreds and hundreds of thin wooden strips that he meticulously detailed with colored paper. He combined them to create a series of large-scale chains of ladder-like structures. The wood was transformed into an ethereal field of suspended elements. Their fragility, multiplicity, and the realization that each was handmade was mesmerizing. 

Day Shade shares similar qualities although the primary materials differ. Here, Dennis has created a suspended network using thousands of hand-cut and hand-sanded strips of glassine, honeycomb board, and iridescent film. Hung like overlapping streamers, Dennis has created visual passageways into and through the vertical field. The sheerness and fragility of the materials has been heightened by the internal illumination that casts glimpses of light, shadows, and color.

Day Shade bears a quiet yet inviting mystical presence. Its ephemeral materiality and overall serene palette offers magical moments with its subtle motion, sparkle, and glow.

Visit briandaviddennis.com.