Daniel Giordano

BIO

Daniel Giordano was born in 1988. He lives and works in Newburgh, NY. Daniel earned his MFA from the University of Delaware. His solo exhibitions include MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; Turley Gallery, Hudson, NY; JDJ, New York, NY; Ann Street Gallery, Safe Harbors of the Hudson, Newburgh, NY; the Rosenberg Gallery, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY; Wil Aballe Art Projects, BC, Canada; and Sardine, Brooklyn, NY. Group exhibitions include Helena Anrather, New York, NY; The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY; The Dorsky Museum, SUNY New Paltz, NY; Fortnight Institute, New York, NY; CLEA RSKY Offsite Project, LeRoy Neiman Gallery, Columbia University, New York, NY; Zürcher Gallery, New York, NY; Fridman Gallery, New York, NY; Barns Art Center, East Fishkill, NY; JDJ, New York, NY; and Anonymous, New York, NY, among others. Daniel participated in the AIM Fellowship at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. His work was featured in Arcade Project, XIBT Magazine, XIBT Magazine, Berkshire Eagle, ABC Latino Magazine, Tussle Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, Times Union, La Voz, Sculpture Magazine, Frontera Digital, Whitehot Magazine, Chronogram, Canadian Art, The New York Times, Cultured Magazine, and Art Spiel, among others. His exhibition, Love from Vicki Island, is on view at MASS MoCA through December 2023.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My sculptures are inspired by my experience in the Hudson Highlands of upstate New York, specifically Newburgh. The City of Newburgh, once a booming industrial hub, now subsists as a gritty husk of its former opulence. Situated on the city's main artery is my grandfather's former garment factory, in which I make artwork amongst dust-laden coats and sewing machines.

The sculptures range from intimate objects to large-scale constructions. Along the shoreline of the river, I glean natural materials and castoffs from the city's industrial heyday. Once I bring these elements into my workspace, I integrate them with factory relics as well as ceramic and cast metal components that I produce en masse. I fashion my own tools, invent my own procedures, and implement surface treatments often derived from the substances I apply topically, ingest, and excrete upon. For example, I often employ Tiger Balm, deep-fried batter, and urinal cake in my work. These materials have a personal connection to me and evoke distinct memories. I immortalize them with a thorough drenching of various resins.

I categorize my sculptures into typologies of work. Each contains a specific material makeup and consistent form. My output is informed by my Italian ancestry, loved ones, and locale.

Daniel Giordano in Conversation with Marcus Civin on November 15, 2023

Daniel, your work is so playful and your thinking so expansive. I want to ask you to join me in a game. Off the cuff, can you recount the whole history of the world in ten steps?

OK, Ummm… One: lava forms Pangea. Two: one-chromosome creatures appear in the ocean. Three: Pangea separates. Four: an ice age happens. Five: a wooly mammoth takes a shit on the location of Vicki Island, the factory where I now work. Six: My grandfather starts Vicki Clothing Company in the same factory. Seven: the cult classic film Pumpkinhead comes out. Eight: I am born December 2, at the end of the same year, 1988. Nine: I become ranked number two in tennis in the Northeast Fourteen and Under. Ten: I dream of a past life dying yards away from MASS MoCA where my exhibition is in 2023.

Another version of the game is communicating the history of art with ten examples.

Shall we do that? I have to start with petroglyphs and the Jōmon period in the history of Japan… Then, the prehistoric mounds around Ohio, that early land art… The Etruscan chariot at The Met… Bernini’s arch at the Vatican, Saint Peter’s Baldachin—it’s black, and it’s got these twisted columns that almost look like Shin Godzilla’s tail… James Ensor’s skeleton image, My Portrait in the Year 1960… Coubet’s The Origin of the World… Francis Bacon’s painting, Head I, from 1948, also in the collection at The Met—that painting made me want to be an artist… Rauschenberg’s precursors to his Combines, a series of small assemblages called Feticci Personali that he makes in Rome in the 1950s… Magdalena Abakanowicz, her big fiber sculptures… Then, me! It comes to me. [Laughs] 

One of the things that strikes me about your work is the details upon details. You might use clay, bald eagle poo, prosciutto, ground-up urinal cakes, railroad spikes, skincare facemasks, glass, a melted contact lens, dental floss (“Only floss the teeth you want to keep,” you recall your mother saying.)… How do you decide what to include in your sculptures?

Everything has to be manipulated and what I like to refer to as sufficiently Giordano-ified. I have to make everything my own. It can’t just be what it is. There has to be a Baroque-ness. At the same time, I love going to Amish country in Pennsylvania. I’m so impressed with how rigorously strict the Amish are in their monastic ways. Monastic ways don’t have to be attached to a spiritual belief system. I think I’m pretty strict with my lifestyle. I do self-initiated residencies where I work with an Amish blacksmith, Elam Stoltzfus. He operates a business out there called Centerville Farrier. We make components together from his old horseshoes. We put them in the forge, then hammer and twist them, shaping them into little accent flames. He’s teaching me, and I’m hiring him to help me realize forged steel components. We also made a bunch of armatures for my cannoli sculptures. 

There’s an elegant grid of your pipe sculptures at MASS MoCA, and I saw some in your studio. They have a relationship to your grandfather. They’re called Pleasure Pipes. They’re funny and there’s something foreboding and crusty about them too. I’m wondering: how did your grandfather die? Did he get lung cancer?

Frank must have died in ‘84 or ’85 before I was born. He got colon cancer. He was eating meat, rare meat. Also gabagool and other processed meats which are level-one carcinogens. 

Pleasure Pipe XIII (Jupiter Optimus Maximus) is the largest pipe at MASS MoCA.

A giant Pleasure Pipe to match my grandfather’s persona! He was a Rat Pack type with the cigar and fedora, and drove a Cadillac, very stereotypical Hollywood Italian-American. He’d have his Gumad and shit like that. My work riffs off the Italian Stallion idea and machismo. I don’t embody that. I think there’s a wide spectrum of masculinity.

You have to imagine that the whole space where you are working now at Vicki Island would have smelled like cigar smoke sometimes because he must have walked through puffing.

Oh, probably. I would have hated that. 

I think you must still have a lot of affection for him.

I didn’t know him. But, yeah, I always asked when I was growing up, “Do you think he’d like me if we knew each other?”

He’s one of your patron saints, I think, because he started the family business your dad inherited, making coats. Like you, he was inspired by your aunt, Vicki. The business started in the fifties?

Right. My Aunt Vicki—who was one of the women who worked in the factory that I now use as a studio—I see her as a spirit entity in the building. This MASS MoCA show, Love from Vicki Island, is named after her. I call the factory Vicki Island. My aunt is still alive. She’s a badass. She moved to Florida. And then there’s another spirit entity in the building who’s called Douche Monk. He’s a naughty monk. He manifests as Truck Nutz that glow in the dark, are beaded, and hang over our heads. I can’t explain how Douche Monk got there, but he’s got a mantra. He says, “Find your true self and go fuck it, and once you do, unleash the fury full-throttle.” How I interpret that is, “Be sincere and true to yourself.” He’s always whispering it in my ear when I’m there. It might be my grandfather. Maybe Frank is Douche Monk.

In the room with the pipes at MASS MoCA, there is also a tall sculpture that almost looks to me in some ways like an oversized treat from an ice cream truck, except made out of foam, resin, and seemingly dozens of found objects. You mention Cyrano de Bergerac and your brother in the title. 

Cyrano is my dad’s hero because he was bright, if not beautiful. He became beautiful through his personality. 

Why don’t you read the label out loud?

Study for Brother as Cyrano de Bergerac, 2016–2020. Acrylic polymer emulsion, aluminum, artificial eyes, brass, buzzard talons, cattails, cayenne pepper, ceramic, coconut coir—

What’s that?

It’s the fiber of the coconut. Coconut coir, copper, cotton towel, dock foam, epoxy, eye shadow, food dye, glass beads, glitter, gourd, gravel, hardware, hosiery, lucky rabbits’ feet, makeup foundation, marzipan, nail polish, Northeastern Fast-Dry tennis court surface, oil-based paint, paper plates—

I use a lot of paper plates in my work ’cause we used to eat off them so regularly growing up. I remember there was the instance when my mom threw up her hands in desperation and said, “I’m not doing any dishes.” From then on, we would eat off of paper plates.

Paper plates, perlite, permanent ink, Peter Eide paintings (Huggable Snuggle Butter, 2020, acrylic on bath towel, 39.5 x 36 inches and Untitled, 2020, acrylic on bath towel, 60 x 48 inches), pigment, pizzelle wafer cookies, plastic bag, plastic wrap, plastic beads, pomade, rubber, self-tanner, shellac, silicone, snow globe, spring peeper frogs, steel coat hanger, steel vacuum nozzle, sumac, synthetic rope, Tang drink mix, tennis racquet grommets, tennis racquet string, the artist’s hair, thread, vinyl, water, caltrop.

I don’t see where the caltrop is, the water chestnut. But there’s a golden eagle! I need to update the material list. And, see the talons? I cut them off of roadkill on the side of the highway in rural Maryland when I was visiting Peter Eide. I use his paintings in my work. They’re behind this rubber with the tennis racquet. I do this to advocate for artist friends and advertise their work. I’ve offered to do it for other people. They haven’t taken me up on it. I’m all about making my community.

In the next room, there’s the motorcycle. Why the motorcycle?

It’s a sports vehicle that’s common in the Hudson Valley. They’re motocross bikes. There are two of them. My grandfather—not Frank, my mom’s dad—was a motorcycle daredevil. He claimed to have known Buffalo Bill and to have toured with him. He would supposedly be in the ring doing crazy tricks with his motorcycle... I deep-fried the whole sculpture.

I can see that! What’s your deep-fried batter recipe?

Eggs, bread crumbs, Italian seasoning, and Canadian maple syrup.

The syrup for color?

To make it tastier.

For who?

[Laughs] I make a slurry in a bucket and slather it on with my hands. I submerge it in boiling oil and then take a torch to it for good measure.

And once it’s crispy, you hit it with resin?

Mhmm.

By battering these machines, are you making fun of them?

It’s all absurd. You’re noticing there’s humor in the work… We created our reality. It could be any other iteration. This reality is what we chose. Here we are, like Robert Smithson’s monuments. I almost had a nervous breakdown last summer when CBS News Sunday Morning dropped a special on forever chemicals. That was very challenging for me. It got me in a dark place. So, now I filter my water. I avoid eating animal products because it’s in them. Particularly freshwater fish from streams have very high concentrations of forever chemicals. I get the hippie soaps, cleaners, and detergents. 

We use so much plastic! I went to the grocery store yesterday and got some blueberries, strawberries, Greek yogurt, and a lot of plastic packaging.

It’s by design! Everyone’s hands are in everyone else’s pockets. 

Big Plastic?

Yeah!

Someone wants a piece of the money someone else is making on blueberries?

They make a lot on the packaging. The government agencies are going to act when it’s too late. It’s already too late because there’s a film of microplastic on the surface of every body of water that you can’t see. Which means it’s also in the air. You know? It pisses me off because I couldn’t guard against it unless I wore an astronaut suit twenty-four-seven.

I think you pick up on the film of microplastic because you’re doing things like shredding small amounts of your brother’s hair for sculptural material. You understand the difference between a surface skimmed with something and a surface without. I feel like other people might not be as readily able to conceptualize what it means that there’s a horrible microlayer on top of the ocean, and it might not bother them as much because they can’t understand it exactly.

You’re absorbing microplastic into your asshole. I’m never going into the ocean again because everything drains into it. It’s disgusting.

I love the ocean.

I know. I’d rather jump in some lakes on the tops of mountains. I’ll take you to one next summer. It will still be poisonous, but not as bad as the ocean. 

You live a very healthy lifestyle, but the chemicals and processes you use in your artwork are dangerous—melting plastics, for instance, or resin.

I have to use the materials from my upbringing and tell my story. I didn’t make this world, and I’m not causing the problems. I just revel in the furious mayhem.

To find out more about Daniel Giordano check out his website and Instagram.