PARIS.- Gagosian Gallery and Colette present ‘En Grève’ (On Strike), a special installation by Dan Colen at Colette in Paris during the week of FIAC 2010.

At Colette, ‘En Grève’ is Colen’s use of the ubiquitous velibs of Paris. Applying pressure to the mass availability and implicit trust embedded in the system of public transportation, Colen has realized an absurd, vaudevillian gesture which functions both as sculpture and event. This site-specific work will occupy the space for seven days, after which, the bicycles will return to their principal function, circulating throughout the city of Paris, carrying the spirit of their time as Dan Colen’s artwork with them.

Dan Colen liberates and exasperates the familiar. With an acute, even transcendental sensitivity to that which is hiding in plain sight, Colen excavates unchartered ground in the slippery discussion begun with Marcel Duchamp’s Readymades. An optimistic eye recognizes the beautiful and the possible in the ever-present, an alchemical mixture of the urge to isolate, vandalize, celebrate, and confer.

Dan Colen was born in New Jersey in 1979. He graduated with a BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Art and Design in 2001. Exhibitions include the 2006 Whitney Biennial, New York; “USA Today”, The Royal Academy, London; “Defamation of Character,” PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island, New York; and “Fantastic Politics,” The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo.

Dan Colen lives and works in New York City.