Dan Bina, New York City

American, born in Illinois, 1984. Dan attended The Chicago Academy for the Arts High School where he graduated 2002. He studied at the Kansas City Art Institute earning his B.F.A. in 2006. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York with his wife, Katya Mezhibovskaya and their daughter, Eva.

Dan works in a variety of fine-art media with a focus on themes of identity, social media, internet culture, and commerce. He utilizes humor as a serious investigation into human communication and narrative. His recent meme series is divided between acrylic and oil paintings on canvas and works on paper. This series appropriates ready-made memes and recontextualizes them as a form of history genre painting. He is interested in a form of internet anthropology and how digital artifacts will age in analog form at the physical scale. Dan curates his meme collection to reflect light and dark humor, anxiety, and the blurred boundaries between private and public life in contemporary share culture, and discourse. He has held a devoted interest to comedy his whole life where truth is coupled with the release of tension, where humor is seen as a need, and is an essential aspect to our shared human experience.

Dan’s collage work explores surrealist and dada themes through the use of mid 20th century source materials, subverting the languages of advertising tropes and the blind optimism of the post war period. These works span narrative and formalist ideas often providing space for improvisation and associative constructions.

Dan’s sculptural works are largely derived from traditional woodworking methods and techniques. These Objet d'art facilitate his need to explore the physicality of material and space and to hone his love of craftsmanship and building. Dan’s formative years were spent making toys and objects in his father’s workshop. His desire to bring form to ideas is at the foundation to his aesthetic philosophy and midwestern heritage stemming from independent critical thinking, and leisure.

Please contact his studio for availability, inquiries, commissions, commercial licensing, and for curatorial projects.

Dan’s collected clientele includes; Calvin Klein, Reebok, Pepsi, Oscilloscope Labs, Gen Art, Thompson Hotel Chicago, Renaissance Hotel Chicago, Gray Hotel Chicago, Moxy NYC, Moxy Phoenix, Hotel Hugo NYC, Northland Hotel Greenbay, Quarters Hotel DC, JDV Hotel DC, Bloomsbury Publishing, Riverhead Books, and Simon & Schuster.