Galeria Nuno Centeno is pleased to present Needy Enigma, Dan Rees’ (b. 1982, Swansea, UK – lives and works in Berlin) fourth exhibition at the gallery. This show features a series of works created in 2024.

Dan Rees’ recent body of work builds upon his experiments with marbling, an image-making technique that for the artist lies somewhere between painting, printmaking, and photography. The somewhat unpredictable technique of marbling references the aesthetics of artisanal paper-craft and bookmaking, as well as children’s early forays into art making. Rees’ work often exploits traditional perspectives of ‘high’ and ‘low’ materials as a way of interrogating the relationship of painting to Conceptual art. The works in the exhibition form two separate bodies; the larger works, which share a format and are displayed serially, are evocative of abstract expressionist painting, while the smaller works are designed to invoke the uniqueness associated with portraiture. Rees’ works champion both randomness and deliberateness; the attention to detail and specificity of the material, combined with careful composition, complicate the unpredictability inherent in the process. Rees’ works combine an investment in the visual with a desire to undermine that same investment.
The show’s title, Needy Enigma, refers to the relation of abstraction to figuration and the manner in which the concept of abstraction may, itself, become representational of an abstract reality. If figurative or representational art contains a form of self-assurance through its legibility, this legibility also disguises its autonomy. If the inherent ‘neediness’ at the heart of abstraction is its striving for social ‘recognition’, this ‘striving’ is also what provides abstraction with its enigmatic character.

– Dan Rees, 2025