Archer, Michael Dan
Dan Archer’s sculptures primarily invoke the physicality of materials and explores their relationship to architecture, humanity and landscape. Archer has been senior lecturer at Loughborough University School of Art and Design since the early 1990’s and he was elected to the council of the Royal Society of British Sculptors in 1995.
His recent work ranges from Full Fathom Five an installation of 108 granite pillars with the profile of a wave, sited on a mound beside the Bristol Channel to Dream Towers, made at the Palmer Biennial in Australia in February 2010; 3 towers of unfired brick housing a solar powered computerised sound system playing narrations of dreams.
Archer’s sculptures, while primarily invoking the massiveness and physicality of stone and its relationship to architecture and landscape, also utilize the powerful sensual qualities of light. In some pieces natural light passes through thin panes of alabaster, other sculptures have involved video projection of elemental imagery through the physical material of marble sculptures. He also works with the intense quality of neon in pieces such as in the large Triptych, granite slabs with red neon flooding thorough the spaces between. The architectural forms of his sculpture do not deal directly with the human figure, but with artefacts and forms, absent of, but implying, a human presence. Themes of transformation and regeneration also play an important part in the background to his sculpture.
Dan has exhibited widely including solo exhibitions at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the Djanogly Gallery and has also made works at sculpture symposiums in Japan, S.Korea, Sardinia, Sweden, Germany, Dubai, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Italy, Australia and India.
Dan has exhibited widely including solo exhibitions at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the Djanogly Gallery and has also made works at sculpture symposiums in Japan, S.Korea, Sardinia, Sweden, Germany, Dubai, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Italy, Australia and India.