René Daniëls: with respect to disrespect

This was one of two essays on René Daniëls' work in Afterall. This issue of the journal served to re-ignite interest in Daniëls' paintings, - somewhat neglected since the early 1990s - anticipating his subsequent inclusion in the exhibition 'Achi-peinture', Camden Art Centre, 2006, and displays of his work in the Tate Modern collection in 2006.
Linking up with many of the issues raised in my text 'Displacements of Shadow' (Output 4), and to concerns of my current art practice, this essay traced a dialogue with architecture within Daniëls' paintings of the 1980s, and linked that dialogue to debates around art's architectural conditions of possibility. Using the psychiatric notion of aphasia, the essay deployed a notion of semiotic aphasia as a device for re-positioning readings of these paintings, and reformulating their relation to other contemporaneous painting. In contesting received understandings of post-modern painting in its relation to other art, and familiar accounts of the death of painting, the essay is closely tied to my ongoing writing on painting that will be evidenced in the next RAE period.