Yves Dana’s “Fragment of Genesis” at Taguchi Fine Art

Taguchi Fine Art, Tokyo, is hosting the first solo show by Swiss sculptor YVES DANA.

Yves Dana was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1959 but moved to Switzerland with his family in 1961. He studied sociology at University of Lausanne and concurrently fine art at Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Geneva from where he got his diploma in 1983. His first solo show was at Galerie Numaga in Auvernier, Switzerland, and since then he periodically holds exhibitions in museums and galleries of Europe, the United States and Singapore.

Currently, Dana lives and works in Lausanne, Switzerland, and Pietrasanta in Tuscany, Italy. His works are in the permanent collection in Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Tel Aviv Museum, many foundations, companies and private collections.

Yves Dana identifies the significance of two particular years in the development of his career: 1985, during which he decided to devote his career to sculpture; and 1996, which marks his first return to Egypt for the first time since his family’s exile. His early works, made in that interval, were cast metal abstractions that alluded to shapes common in machines or musical instruments. In Egypt, Dana became inspired by hieratic art, and as a result he simplified the shapes and surfaces in his work. During the visit, he began work on his famous “Stele” series of sculptures, which are modeled after the ancient upright stone slabs bearing engraved designs or inscriptions. Dana’s “Stele” similarly featured sculpted vignettes or glyph-like marks, and were fashioned from internationally imported stones.

 

Yves Dana is known for creating non-figurative sculptures with the use of authentic and traditional materials in the history of sculpture. He exclusively worked on iron at the beginning of his career but gradually moved to bronze and stone also. His recent focus is stone sculpture. In spite of the changing of the material, the thing which remains consistent is that he works directly on the material without any prior preparation of drawings or models. He always works with his hands without leaving any part or process of the creation to his assistants or technicians. The exhibition is showcasing five of his stone sculptures and two bronze sculptures.