For his debut solo exhibition with Hauser & Wirth, New York-based artist Daniel Turner presents works created by salvaging, transforming and recontextualizing materials extracted from the Mandalay Generating Station, a decommissioned power plant located 60 miles northwest of Downtown Los Angeles.
Established in the mid-20th century, the Southern California Edison-operated facility supplied the region’s electricity needs through natural gas-powered thermoelectric generation until its closure in 2017. Turner’s transformation of remnants from the electrical plant into a series of paintings, drawings, sculptures and film echoes a calibrated process of material distillation and site-responsive reflection.
Turner’s practice is driven by the conviction that physical objects are inherently imbued with the emotional, psychological and historical contexts from which they were employed. His examination of the properties of alloys has led to large-scale paintings and works on paper that utilize copper elements extracted from the Oxnard site. Once removed, these components were spliced through an intricate milling process into refined copper wools. Subsequently, these wools were methodically burnished into the surfaces of canvases, resulting in achromatic veils within his picture planes
Daniel Turner Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth Photo: Keith Lubow
In the sculpture ‘Channel Conduit’ (2024), a coiled arrangement of materials stripped from the plant’s infrastructure—that once facilitated the induction of seawater for temperature regulation—are now positioned as conduits for perceptual consideration. Surface textures illuminate the merits of metallurgical compositions once vital to the power plant’s operational systems. Isolated and recomposed, these objects invite reflection between technology, temporality and the invisible elements that environ our immediate consciousness.
A series of vitrines containing schematics, found archival materials and small-scale sculptures provide a traceable lineage of data collection, system processes and procedures fundamental to the functionality of the decommissioned site. Turner’s latest film ‘Oxnard Harbor’ (2024) features aerial footage captured via drone orbiting the vacated generating station. Set against the dramatic backdrop of the Pacific Ocean, the vast architecture points to the facility’s once substantial production of electricity for the greater Los Angeles region.
Daniel Turner, – 25th August 2024, Hauser & Wirth Downtown Los Angeles
About the artist
Daniel Turner was born in Portsmouth VA in 1983 and lives and works in New York. He studied painting and printmaking at Norfolk State University before receiving a BFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2006. Turner’s work will be the subject of a major solo museum exhibition at the Musée des Arts Contemporains GrandHornu, Hornu, Belgium in December 2024. Additional group exhibitions this year include ‘Beware*,’ curated by Ari Marcopoulos, Musée d’art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France and ‘Stories from the Ground / 9th Biennial o
Painting,’ curated by Martin Germann, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium.The artist has participated in numerous institutional exhibitions including Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; The Chinati Foundation, Marfa TX; The Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France; The Pinchuk Art Center, Kyiv, Ukraine; KunstmuseenKrefeld, Germany; Museen Haus Esters und Haus Lange, Krefeld, Germany; Musée des Arts ContemporainsGrand Hornu, Hornu, Belgium; The Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France; Muzeul de Arta Cluj-Napoca, Cluj-Napoca, Romania; The Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland; The MoriArt Museum, Tokyo, Japan; and The Maria Leuff Foundation, New York. Turner’s works are held in private and public collections at SMAK Ghent; Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; le FRAC Bretagne, Rennes, France; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France; ICA Miami, FL; and at the Musée des Arts Contemporains Grand Hornu, Hornu, Belgium, among others
