Daniel A'Vard
Porepunkah, Victoria
Lens based artist exploring awe and wonder through digital photographic processes
Message
Daniel A'Vard is an emerging photographic artist based in Naarm, Melbourne, Australia on the unceded lands of the Boon Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation.
His art relates to his fascination with and desire to experience extravagant hope. He creates luminous, hyper-real, abstracted landscapes using digital photography and post-production techniques that are presented in lightboxes or as translucent, fabric prints. In this way, he draws on the rich history of mystical and spiritual art (as seen in stained glass windows) using light transmission to ask the viewer to look into the work as one looks into a window.
Statement
For millennia, people and societies have looked beyond rational knowledge and into what many conceive as a spiritual realm and art has been at the centre of this exploration. Since at least Byzantine times, artists have used abstraction, colour and symbolism to express the inexpressible. Daniel builds on this tradition by combining his contemporary, digital based practice with ancient rhythms of contemplation and exploration. For him, contemplation and action are two sides of the same coin as are experience and exploration.
In his work he explores the existence of something more and something other. In making abstracted landscape images and using translucent media Daniel seeks to create an invitation to this ‘other place’ and his practice is grounded in the belief that by looking beyond ourselves into a (constructed) place that is greater than we can see or feel, we can see a deeper reflection of our own hearts and our own wonder.
Daniel has participated in numerous group shows and his hyper-real, multi-dimensional portraits have been commissioned and hung in private collections.