Daniel Sinsel - Amelia's magazine Summer 2007

 

I wrote an article on Daniel Sinsel in Amelia's Magazine Summer 2007 issue, here is a little extract.

Floating penises showered by their own lubrication, or rearing from a robin’s red breast; scarlet ribbon entwined around a pretzel,  wooden knives dripping rubies and painted eggs with horsehair appendages is what you can expect from Bavarian artist Daniel  Sinsel. The London based 31-year-old who graduated from the Royal College of Art back in 2004 creates fascinating objects and  paintings that are layered with recurring motifs of a surrealist, religious and homoerotic nature.

It’s difficult to pigeonhole Sinsel’s practice, although he paints, he himself has said he doesn’t consider himself ‘... the stereotypical  painter...I hardly defend my work as painting in a militant way.’ yet he chooses this age-old medium as his tool to render beautiful  boys on linen or hazelnuts on the shells of eggs. Using colour grounds of the Northern  Renaissance with figures of a Neoclassical  propensity amalgamated with Bauhaus craftsmanship; you might wonder what this mismatch of references can conjure up but be  assured Sinsel’s talent far surpasses that of merely mimicking these epochs of art history.  At his first solo show at Sadie Coles HQ in  May 2005, Sinsel displayed his aptitude for miniature painting. Some works not spanning larger than a child’s hand, referenced  naked men from pornographic magazines through meticulous brushwork collaged with intriguing objects. The experimentation  with different materials; horsehair, leather string, precious stones, antlers, walnuts, eggs, wood, and coconuts, seems more a  purposeful choice of specific combinations, almost like a perfect mathematical equation of varying pictorial devices.