Saatchi star to exhibit new collection at the Stanley Picker Gallery

By Isa Hemphrey

An artist who is currently featured in the Tate Modern and the Saatchi collection, is holding his latest exhibition at the Stanley Picker gallery this month.

Kingston University fine art PhD student, Dan Hays, will be displaying his oil paintings, made up of thousands of coloured painted dots to represent pixilation as part of his Screen as Landscapes project.

“I hope that my paintings will change up close and from a distance,” said Mr Hays. “For me what is special about painting is the sense of distance of proximity that my paintings create.”

Mr Hays said that some of the detailed paintings for the exhibition took him up to six months.

“I’m using a projector but for a long time I used photographs or computer print outs and did my work square by square, which would take much longer”

It explores the genre of the landscape and how it is being threatened by the virtual and hi-tech world through the “BBC wildlife spectaculars, computer simulated Hollywood blockbusters, video games, or Google Earth”.

“I see my paintings as flawed computer print outs. Flaws in the sense that they’re not perfect when you look at them close up,” said Mr Hays.
 Screen as Landscape will show from December 7 to December 17 2011.