DANIEL BARROW

Sculpture & Drawing

In my sculptural work, I have interlocked shapes directly inspired by Victorian paper dolls (see Paper Doll Poems). For my 2018 solo exhibition at Centre Clark, I had these shapes laser cut in wood, painted gold, and then fit together to form queer, sculptural, wooden “dolls”. These figures may alternately be regarded as miniature mannequins, wooden paper dolls, and “narrative architectures”. Many of my dolls were clothed in toilet paper (a tribute to my childhood), printed with images or poems. Other dolls were anthropomorphic “closets” who both wear and contain doll-sized costumes with political slogans. Sometimes, I think of these pictorial closets as “anti-dolls”, pointing to an ironic or despairing absence of the figure, with a reference to the scene in children’s cartoons in which a character runs screaming through a wall, leaving a crisp silhouetted void.

The majority of my past work has centered on the practice of drawing. It is through drawing, sketching, and process-based experimentation on paper that all of my works emerge. My most ambitious recent drawings are created using chalk pastel and archival marker.

At First I Thought It Was a Mannequin

2018

(Photo: Paul Litherland)

Installation view of the At First I Thought It Was a Mannequin series exhibited at Centre Clark, Montreal, March 2018.

Pyramid 2

2018

Wood, screen-printed paper, toilet paper, resin, fabric, plastic

145 x 200 x 10 cm

Mixed media sculptural wall piece. Part of the At First I Thought It Was a Mannequin series.

Flaying (detail of Pyramid) – wood, paint, printed toilet paper (23 x 28 x 8 cm)

Loo Rolls (detail of Pyramid) – wood, paint, printed toilet paper (23 x 28 x 8 cm)

Shower Sex and other Outhouse/Closet structures (details of Pyramid)

2018

Wood, paint, printed tissue paper

16 x 33 x 8 cm

My “staircase sculptures” assemble my smaller sculptural sketches – including many pictorial architectures. This is one of many outhouse/closet structures with hinged doors. Rolls of miniature toilet tissue (printed with poems) are fixed to the roof sides.

I Did the Grunt Work (detail of Pyramid)

2018

Wood, paint, fabric, Pringles container and Pringles, and other mixed media

23 x 28 x 8 cm

The Descent

2018

Wood, brass, screen printed paper, toilet paper clay, printed toilet paper

18 x 60 x 54 cm

This sculptural wall piece is part of the At First I Thought It Was a Mannequin series. The work features a poetic pictorial toilet paper dispenser. The viewer is invited to tear a 21-inch poem printed on toilet tissue.

Bouquet of Mirrors

2019

Gilded resin frame with black and white video and security mirror

72 x 67 x 8 cm

Bouquet of Mirrors is a mixed media video art installation. When a gallery viewer approaches the gilded mirror, one of seven queer masks is illuminated. (Initially, the poems were presented as puppet plays). The mirror is double-sided so when the video is turned on inside the wall, the lightest parts of the video float to the surface of the mirrored glass. Each animated mask presents a poem consisting of 8-9 rhyming lines.