Beginning with water damaged reels of 16mm vintage 1970’s adult films, Havel selectively cut, scanned and collected stills to create expressive works of art. The viewer is introduced to a fluid world of the entropic effects of water and time on the film emulsion, creating fractal pools and cracks that intertwine with slivers of images from the film. The resulting images are mysterious and animated, colorful and story telling, retroactive in appearance and contemporary in color and concept.

New Exhibit
Icebox Gallery presents:
“Open 24 Hours”,
an exhibition of work by Dan Havel.

OPENING- 8 PM to Midnight on January 19th, 2008.

Show continues thru Saturday March 6th, 2008.

SEE THE SHOW ONLINE!

Dan Havel, is a Minnesota native who now lives in Houston, TX. He is best known for site-specific installations that explore the visual and conceptual opportunities in manmade and natural transformations of the world around us.

In 1993, Dan Havel was invited to create a site-specific installation in an abandoned X - rated movie theater in downtown Houston. While excavating the space, Havel found dozens of rusting film reels behind the screen. The roof had long collapsed, and rainwater had damaged the film emulsion. The reels were gathered and used as sculptural elements in the lobby for the piece. Once disassembled, the reels went back to Havel’s studio for 14 years.

During the past year, Havel has revisited these images and produced a series of digital prints taken from scanning portions of the surviving reels of film. With the help of digital and printing technology not available in 1993, Havel has created striking digital prints that introduce an intimate landscape of images altered by the effects of the water-damaged emulsion. The colorful surfaces are cracked and scratched, with fractals of pooled emulsion intertwining and framing the various figures, stories, and locations in the films. The work mixes the naughty and kitschy images of x-rated film plots with the abstract expressionist exuberance of decay.