Danny Sobor

Overview
View works. Danny Sobor, chorus, 2024
chorus, 2024
View works

(b. 1992) Chicago, Illinois
Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY

 

Film, photography, and the internet’s digital filtration system are the first steps in Sobor’s methodology. The digital detritus that Sobor sorts through is grounded in Yandex's reverse image platform, to which he feeds images saved in his inventory. The uncensored platform lends an unbidden flow of visual information, ripe for extraction. Sobor’s method of sourcing reference materials is thus consigned to the back alleys of the internet, as the already tenuous pictures or screenshots are often untraceable, or entirely removed from the internet upon probing. Screenshots and thumbnails are then compiled by Sobor as a means to ignite something convincing enough to render in oils, making their existence concrete as real-world objects.
 
These are thin paintings, the amount of oil added initially is scant, and Sobor further minimizes his material with the imposition of a dry brush. This methodology produces a veiling effect, as though one must puncture a cloud in order to reach the clarified image.
 
Hito Steyerl’s essay “In Defense of the Poor Image” defines the concept as “a ghost of an image, a preview, a thumbnail, an errant idea, an itinerant image distributed for free, squeezed through slow digital connections, compressed, reproduced, ripped, remixed, as well as copied and pasted into other channels of distribution.” She further regards the poor image as one that “is liberated from the vaults of cinemas and archives and thrust into digital uncertainty, at the expense of its own substance.” In Sobor’s world, the prehistoric technology of paint thus meets an age of technologically bent accelerationism, where the complete overabundance of information encumbers users with the weight of digital inheritance.   - Reilly Davidson
Works
Biography
Danny Sobor

(b. 1992) Chicago, Illinois
Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY

 

 Sobor spent most of his adult life in Detroit, Michigan where he taught himself to paint. There, his exposure to futurism, techno, and vacancy shaped his worldview. 

 

EDUCATION
2015:  BA in Visual Art and Neuroscience from Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island

 

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2023:  Just a window. In, Fortnight Institute, New York, New York
2018:  10 Warm Months, Playground Detroit, Detroit, Michigan

 

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2024: The Blue Hour, Union Pacific, London, UK

2023:  Now That’s What I Call Devotion!, Outlet, Projects, New York, New York

2023:  Paintings of Common Objects, Fortnight Institute, New York, New York
2019:  Ultra Light Beams, Mount Analogue Gallery, Seattle, Washington
2016:  The Printer’s Devil, The Scarab Club, Detroit, Michigan
2016:  The Korean Contemporary Printmakers Association Annual Exhibition, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea.

Press
Exhibitions
Publications