| Daniel Dorall | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1979 Penang, Malaysia |
| Nationality | Malaysian / Australian |
| Field | Sculpture, |
| Training | Bachelor of Science in Architecture (Honours), University of Malaya, Bachelor of Architecture, University of Melbourne |
Daniel Dorall (born 11 September 1979) is a Malaysian Australian sculptor who specialises in miniature works. He completed a Bachelor of Architecture at the University of Melbourne in 2005, having previously earned a Bachelor of Science in Architecture with honours from the University of Malaya in 2002. He is currently undertaking the Master of Fine Art in sculpture at Monash University
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His current art practice is informed by his fascination with the formal properties and possibilities of miniature maze-like constructions. Dorall’s interest lies in employing the maze as the conceptual medium of his artwork. The mazes represent a constructed space stripped of functional value, wherein minute human figures play out various narratives. The themes in his work are self-exploration, tragicomedy, social and urban issues, sexuality, religion, memory and nostalgia and mythical/historical enactments. The audience is free to interpret Dorall’s representations of human foibles on various levels. The audience is a voyeur, spying on grief and predicting the fate of the trapped game, but powerless to intercede[1]
Dorall’s work has strong links to the Surrealist tradition of representing scenarios from the unconscious: His exquisite structures perform in the manner of our most puzzling dreams; they make perfect sense while also being completely irrational[2]
Australian art critic Robert Nelson finds in Dorall’s work a nightmarish representation of the claustrophobic and stultifying nature of suburbia: Most frighteningly, Dorall takes us to the very set-up of domestic life, where we package our existence in suburban blocks with … the circuitry of paths and borders, beds and lawns, all obsessively demarcating private spaces …. Dorall's little figures sit conversing in vast expanses of artificially enclosed greens, all alienated from the organic pulse of the city, insulated, modularised and upmarket.[3]
Writing for Dorall’s 2009 exhibition under the Bombay Saphire Arts Project, Simpang, Malaysia, curator Simon Soon remarks: Dorall's mazes makes us aware of the possible choices we make in life. Within the maze construction, one encounters by peering in from above, like God's eye view, the dramatic cycle of human existence and its emotional range: loneliness, joy, fear, serenity, are mapped out within a physical geography that sets the stage for the ensuing encounters.[4]
In Melbourne, Dorall has held exhibitions at: George Paton Gallery; Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces; Red Gallery; Dianne Tanzer Gallery, Postgraduate Gallery, Monash University.
He has also exhibited at: Valentine Willie Fine Art, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; The Kiosk / The Physics Room, Christchurch, New Zealand.