Project Room: Danny Thach

White Columns is pleased to present the first New York exhibition by the Bay Area-based artist Danny Thach. Thach is affiliated with the NIAD Art Center (National Institute of Arts & Disabilities) in Richmond, CA, a studio program and gallery that supports artists living and working with developmental disabilities. Thach’s exhibition continues White Columns’ ongoing collaborations with NIAD that included our 2012 solo exhibition with NIAD-affiliated artist Marlon Mullen.

In 2015, Danny Thach was introduced to the work of Keith Haring at the exhibition “Keith Haring – The Political Line” at San Francisco’s De Young Museum. On returning to NIAD, Thach subsequently embarked on a complex project of creating his own interpretations or ‘versions’ of some of Haring’s most iconic images. Taking existing Haring works as his departure point, Thach subtly re-interprets selected images, shifting colors or adding additional elements of his own.  Over the past 18 months, Thach has made more than seventy individual works based on Haring’s, of which more than forty are on display at White Columns.  Thach’s work, whilst evidently operating within the traditions of appropriation (e.g. Sturtevant, Richard Pettibone, etc.) is less interested in questioning the nature of the ‘original’ or ideas surrounding ‘authorship’; rather his project might be better understood as an ‘amplification’ or a ‘mirroring’ of the original utopian impulses at the heart of Haring’s approach.

In parallel to the exhibition, White Columns has published a ‘zine by Thach entitled ‘Animation and Tribute’ which is available from the gallery, priced $2.00.

White Columns would like to thank Tim Buckwalter and everyone at NIAD, Richmond, CA for the enthusiasm and support in bringing Danny Thach’s work to New York. To learn more about NIAD: www.niadart.org

Danny Thach (b. 1986), lives and works in the Bay Area and is affiliated with the NIAD Art Center, Richmond, CA. Thach’s works have been included in numerous group exhibitions at the NIAD Art Center, Richmond, CA; and in a solo exhibition “Danny Thach vs Keith Haring” at Yali’s Café, Berkeley, CA (2016).