MEDITATIONS (2022)
Today’s political discord, pandemic, economic inequalities, and geopolitical strife are challenging the emotions of every individual. The Mediations series provides an oasis from these challenges by evoking a feeling of stability, truth, and harmony through contemplation.
Photographic Series
VOICES IN MOTION (2021)
Voices in Motion is a single-channel video based on the WORDS on WORDS print series. Distinct single-word responses derived from the answers of the more than 3000 participants in the WORDS project are layered throughout the panels in a vast array of colors.
WORDS (2012-2020)
Brian Dailey’s ambitious artwork, WORDS, is the creative summation of an odyssey that has taken him to 120 countries over the course of seven years WORDS is the artist’s investigation into the impact of globalization and its effect on key human structures of language, society, culture, and environment.
Mixed Media
Whitewash (2020)
The Whitewash series of 13 prints are unique individual collages of one inch strips from the 131 national flags used to represent the more than 3000 participants in the WORDS project. A cross-section of the participants’ answers are embedded in each of the 13 words used for the project.
Print Series
WORDS on WORDS (2020)
WORDS on WORDS comprises 13 lenticular prints. Distinct single-word responses derived from the answers of the more than 3000 participants in the WORDS project are layered throughout the panels in a vast array of colors enhanced by the 3D effect.
Lenticular Print Series
14 STATIONS AT THE CROSSROADS BOOK (2020)
This artist’s book is a multi-dimensional reconceptualization of Brian Dailey’s 14 Stations at the Crossroads project, an autobiographical series of paired staged photographic tableaus and paintings linked through the symbolism of corresponding colors.
Book
TOUS LES MOTS (2018)
Tous les Mots gives voice to all of the nearly 3,000 participants who engaged in the WORDS Project. The various responses were calibrated and scaled to reflect the frequency in which they were articulated.
Print Series
LAMENTATIONS (2017)
Lamentations is a two- and three-dimensional series exploring the exponential increase in the destructive capabilities of military weapons and the relationship to contemporary nuclear theology and ultimately the implications for human survival. Like much of Dailey’s work, Lamentations reflects the artist’s decades-long engagement in international affairs, national security, and arms control.
Mixed Media
QUIETUS (2017)
Over the course of the artist’s wife’s protracted battle with cancer, Dailey took note of the wide-range of emotions that consumed him while caring for her. These single word notations are combined with the self-composed sounds of Tibetan singing bowls, culminating in the passage from Hamlet’s soliloquy in Shakespeare’s eponymous play: “When he himself might his quietus make...”
Single-Channel Video
Running Time: 7 Minutes 1 Second
RIDDLES (2015)
The Riddles helical series leverages the artist's past experience in intelligence and geopolitical matters. The artist composed poetic riddles and “wrapped” them in his own De Stijl like cipher that serves both as an art form and the key to unraveling a contemporary conundrum.
Print Series
MORPHEUS (2014)
Morpheus, the mythological god of dreams in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, is invoked in this autobiographical series recounting the artist’s nocturnal journeys from 2010-2011. He leverages these dreams as vehicles for subconscious investigation.
Photographic Series
BULGARIA IN DEMOCRACY (2014)
On the 25th anniversary of democracy in Bulgaria, Dailey embarked on a photographic journey of the country, capturing its political electorate in all its complexity. He set out to portray the character of the Bulgaria voter as it completed its latest national election in the fall of 2014.
Photographic Series
IMPRESSIONS OF AFRICA: REDUX (2014)
In the specter of otherworldly and fantastical imagery, Impressions of Africa Redux (2014) composes flora, fauna, and cosmological imagery into its own universe. The series is a pastiche and tribute to the French proto-surrealist writer Raymond Roussel and his 1910 novel of the same name. Mounted on Plexiglass and backlit with LED panels, the five-foot tall composite images provide a three-dimensional quality.
Photographic Series
EIDOLON (2014)
In title and form, Dailey’s Eidolon series is both myth and metaphor. The eidolon of ancient Greek literature is a spirit-image or doppelgänger. As in Walt Whitman’s 1892 poem Eidolon, this ancient term serves in Dailey’s compositions as literary and visual manifestations of phantom forms.
Photographic Series
CROSSROADS OF HISTORY (2013)
Spanning 2500 years of human history, the artist uses color and crossroads symbology to express the dynamics of consequential moments during this period of time. The fast moving symbolism is paced with the soundtrack of the Persian musician, Fared Shafinury, and his regionally inspired work entitled “Rio Grande”. Through the symbolism of color, crossroads, and the contemporary musical tempo of Mesopotamian, the valley where early human civilization developed, the artist brings together in five minutes a kaleidoscope of human history and emotion.
JIKAI (2013)
Like the moth drawn to the light in this video’s hypnotic dance with death, we are all irresistibly attracted to danger despite knowing its potential for negative consequences. Making an allusion to Shakespeare’s line in The Merchant of Venice, the moth in Jikai is a metaphor for self-destruction and its fluttering around a light bulb is a meditation on societal disintegration.
AMERICA IN COLOR (2010-2012)
Amidst the cacophony of the bitterly polarized political environment in the United States, the artist embarked on a multifaceted two-year endeavor of photographic portraiture. America in Color comprises over 1,200 individual portraits across 20,000 miles of both rural and urban America. The project addresses questions about democracy, diversity, identity, and stereotypes.
Photographic Series
AMERICA IN COLOR VIDEO (2012)
Featuring select portraits from America in Color, this video is a dynamic archive revealing a broad diversity of the individuals—socially, professionally, and politically—who constitute the demographic that is the democratic foundation of America today.
Single-Channel Video
Running Time: 34 Minutes 10 Seconds
POLEMOS (2012)
The cacophonous and politically prescient 2010 video Polemos presents a hovered view of the state of political discourse in the United States during these polarized times.
Single-Channel Video
Running Time: 15 Minutes
14 STATIONS AT THE CROSSROADS (2011, 2020)
Dailey often mines his life experiences through art. No work epitomizes this approach more than 14 Stations at the Crossroads, an autobiographical series of paired photographic tableaus and paintings linked through symbolism and corresponding colors.
Mixed Media
TABLEAU VIVANT (2010)
Employing props, actors, stage design, and theatrical lighting for this series, Dailey creates composite photo-based images that draws on the historical genre of tableau vivant. In the complex scenes, he utilizes this format as a vehicle for commentary on contemporary social and political issues.
Photographic Series
PERFORMANCE & INSTALLATIONS (1970s)
Dailey’s evolution as an artist was greatly influenced by the milieu in Los Angeles in the 1970s where his career began. The pioneering employment of alternative approaches to art making embraced by this community of artists is evident in Dailey’s installations and performances from this period in which the political and social challenges of the time are reflected.
Performance & Installations