Dan Monick Exhibition “FANTASY HOURS”

10th Jun Fri – 29th Jun Wed, 2022

Opening Reception : 6/10 FRI 6-8pm

At gallery commune

We are having an exhibition of LA based photographer/artist Dan Monick; “Fantasy Hours” starting on 10th June Friday.

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Fantasy Hours

Fantasy Transmissions is the name of a service station you passed once, you told me. For car repairs, for car transmissions, for fixing their slowing down and speeding up. Fantasy Hours, the sign said, 8 to 5, closed sat & sun. Closed weekends to cars. But not to fantasy, or to fantasy transmissions, spun around the clock from the tangled warp of earthbound and a clear-eyed weft of elsewhere.

Headlights rushing into nightime’s oncoming lane, glowing up coyote eyes, marbles full of adamantine whose-asking can-do. Impervious, the species is versatile, able to adapt to and expand into environments modified by humans. Modified. Modified. Modified?

Loose domestic dogs pose a much greater risk of attack than urban coyotes.

Your pictures might be an inventory of sparkles amidst shadow’s incantations. Some signs read like proverbs. They indicate, promise, proclaim, entice, but as pictures, taken straight on, in the dark, locally lit, noone around, so they become more statements of fact. A little introverted even, both exposed and turning away in their doors locked dreaming. L.A.’s x-axis, structures recumbent, louche, glinting, and then those sky-reaching-kingdom-come verticals up the y. Where the x- and y-axis meet is sometimes called the origin. ( I am visited by the sensation of opening the yellow pages as a kid, does anyone else remember that? A kind of thrilling alphabetized graphic urgency, vibrating, then gridded and equalized with an economy of means and elegant thrift).

In bright red outline, an outstretched palm-less unreadable hand. Its neon light — on, as it rises above OPEN, neon light — off, so closed.

Destiny Inn.

A photographer, a camera, alone seeking lonesome horizontal handsomes, and what in so seeking does he want to knowfeel? Help in all walks of life. Fantasy transmissions. Phantasmagoria. PAST PRESENT FUTURE PARKING IN REAR.

There’s a cat on my flight, he writes, en route, just meows every once in a while.

Meanwhile, little makes me so happy as the sound of rain on things, like now, in this early summer dusk into evening.

Text by Jenny Monick
For Gallery Commune, Tokyo

June, 2022
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Dan Monick
lives and works in Los Angeles. This is his third exhibition in Tokyo and second at gallery commune. While working commercially for years, he began the process of documenting the signage and storefronts of Los Angeles. Monick runs the small edition press Cash Machine out of his Atwater Village studio.
www.dmonick.com
Instagram: @danmonick