Dan Levenson is a Los Angeles-based visual artist working in painting, sculpture, installation, performance, and video. His work explores the relationship of art and freedom through the lens of art education. The paintings and objects he creates represent artifacts rescued from the ruins of an imaginary art school: the State Art Academy, Zurich (its initials in Swiss-German dialect are SKZ). As a painter, he completes classroom exercises for imaginary students, following the strict formalist pedagogy of the SKZ. Metric standard sized canvases are divided geometrically to create abstract compositions. He expands on the story through performance, installation and video. Levenson has taught performative drawing lessons taken from the school's curriculum at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, American Jewish University, Los Angeles, USC's Roski School of Art, and the Saas-Fee Summer Institute in Berlin, Germany.
Levenson has exhibited at The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Philadelphia Art Alliance; James Fuentes Online; Vielmetter Los Angeles; Honor Fraser, Los Angeles; Praz-Delavallade, Paris and Los Angeles; de boer Gallery, Los Angeles; Timothy Hawkinson Gallery, Los Angeles, PARTICIPANT INC, NYC; LAXART, Los Angeles; White Columns, NYC; and Vox Populi, Philadelphia, PA. He is the recipient of a Pollock/Krasner grant and Yaddo and MacDowell Fellowships, among other awards.