Thomas Dan
Exhibition Project:
Weather Balloon Work II, 2000, after 1980
(weather balloon, table, lamps, popcorn-poppers, popcorn, vacuum cleaner)
Thomas Dan created a new version of his Weather Balloon Projections, a piece from 1980 that he had remade on two other occasions before this. This time, Dan returned to his sketchbook notes to generate a variation. In place of the original piece's film projections, the eight-foot-diameter weather balloon was lit from behind by the gentler light from three table lamps. The lamps occasionally produced cascades of popcorn, popping up from inside their lampshades. Kinetic, playful and surprising, even edible, this new element typefies Dan's commitment to the ephemeral as a central, renewing part of his art.
Through his early involvement with Nexus, and as curator and participant
in a performance art series, Five Easy Pieces, at the artists' collective Etage,
Thomas Dan was active in the development of Philadelphia's alternative art scene
in the seventies and eighties. His performances and installations involving projections,
found objects, kinetic elements, visual and verbal puns, and surprising juxtapositions offer
audiences experiences of humor and wonder. Dan also exhibited in Fleisher Art Memorial's
Challenge Series, and is a 1995 Pew Fellowship recipient.