“Paintings by Daniel Lannes are omnivorous. They feed on various sources of images and techbiques to fuel their originality and gain bodily weight. Scenes from documentaries or from the imagination are re-invented and laid out on broad surfaces. Some are decades or centuries old; others produced only yesterday. The historical and the banal interest Lannes in equal measure and he thus breaks down the conventional hierarchies that have scant regard for the banal.”
Moacir dos Anjos
Lannes' painting focuses on the physical, cultural, and historical body, while the triad of sex, power, and violence is fundamental to his poetics. Working on the border between the figurative and the abstract, his compositions can bring a clear portrait of a historical figure, or diffuse stains that suggest an event to be completed by our imagination. His colorism, style, and composition, built with wide brushstrokes, constitute a production that demonstrates technical accuracy and experimental vigor to the same extent. According to Lannes, a successful painting is one in which the procedural accident and the narrative intention are interspersed in the construction of the image. The leitmotiv of his work is then revealed: to narrate, not to explain.