NEW YORK, NY.- Alexander Berggruen presents Danny Fox: Fata Morgana, the gallery’s second solo exhibition with the artist. This exhibition will open Wednesday, September 9 with a 6-8 pm reception at the gallery (1018 Madison Avenue, Floor 3, New York, NY).
Danny Fox blends domestic imagery with influences from his natural environment to create eerily striking articulations of the human psyche. His new body of work Fata Morgana explores illusion through optical distortions, ambiguous imagery, and abstracted depth. Across Fox’s recurrent motifs of horses, boats, and interiors, the artist hints at unseen forces of psychology, evident in the figures’ gestures and how they relate to their environments.
While spending many hours observing the Cornish coastline, Fox was inspired by the passing ships. His seascapes often resemble the colors and forms of those painted by the historical Cornish painter Alfred Wallis. While Wallis rarely included figures on his boats, Fox does. He supplements his memory with historical reenactment images as reference material for boats and uniforms. Different flags appear on several boats, acting as a compositional device. Speaking about his boat paintings, Fox stated, “I find the image of the small boat or vessel similar to the horse and rider in many ways. So classic, so fundamentally human but simultaneously ambiguous. These paintings reflect on the poignancy of the humble journey so many have made, and perhaps we all must make.”
During his time watching the coastline, Fox witnessed a fata morgana—an ever-morphing optical illusion, often just above the horizon in the ocean, caused by light passing through layers of air at different temperatures. Above the horizon line of the titular painting are various dark forms. The brushstrokes used to create these forms are repeated in the cloudy sky above, leaving ambiguity about what is real. A fata morgana is a trick of light, much like a painting itself. The illusion is nearly convincing until a viewer sees Fox’s thick brushstrokes and remembers the image is painted.
The artist’s hand is evident in many of Fox’s paintings. He applies paint thickly with strong gestures and wide brush strokes. Known to paint over previous compositions, occasionally a viewer may catch textural pentimenti—remnants from earlier brush strokes. Fox also uses the dry brush technique to add scratchy texture to enhance areas including moss growth, water, land, furniture, fabrics, fur, and feathers. In Destiny’s basement, the artist painted the walls using dry brush in order to create a striped pattern and to add mysterious lighting to the room.
All of Fox’s paintings are populated by multiple figures and/or animals, reminiscent of group scenes painted by douard Manet. Fox simplifies form to imply scenes with minimal brushstrokes, recalling figures painted by Henri Matisse or the historic British artist Christopher Wood. Many of the figures and animals in Fox’s paintings are aware of a viewer, returning their gaze.
Where a fata morgana makes visible an elusive atmospheric event, Fox’s paintings bring his mysterious subjects’ psychology to light. Much like his figures lounging in interiors, Fox’s boats, horses, and riders are not actually moving, even though in some cases there may be an implication that they are. Fox’s subjects will forever be in a state of departing or arriving, perhaps always about to but never quite reaching their destinations. There is always another journey.
Danny Fox (b. 1986, St. Ives of Cornwall, England), a self-taught artist, held his first museum solo exhibition at Levinsky Gallery, The University of Plymouth, UK in 2025. He has exhibited internationally at Chinatown Taylor, Los Angeles, CA; Alexander Berggruen, New York, NY; Hannah Barry Gallery, London, UK; The Saatchi Gallery, London, UK; Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles, CA; Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Zidoun-Bossuyt Gallery, Luxembourg; Yuz Project Space of Art, Shanghai, CN; and V1 Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark, among others. The artist’s work is included in the collection of the Denver Art Museum, CO; Start Museum, Shanghai, CN; The Nixon Collection, London, UK; and the Yuz Foundation, Shanghai, CN. Fox lives and works in St. Ives of Cornwall, England.
