Opening & Artist Reception
Saturday, May 2, 5–7pm
Municipal Bonds is pleased to present Dan Levenson's second solo exhibition with the gallery, A5 Format Oil on Paper Studies and A3 Format Student Palettes from the SKZ, on view in the Annex from May 2 through June 20, 2026. His work represents artifacts rescued from the ruins of the imaginary State Art Academy, Zürich (SKZ), a school governed by proportion. Student paintings are structured exercises based on standard metric paper sizes. Even the furniture reflects those same measurements.
"The A5 Format Oil on Paper Studies occupy an ambiguous status: they are both the work of fictional students, and preliminary exercises rather than finished pieces. Likewise, the A3 Format Student Palettes blur categories. Similar to the palettes displayed in exhibition vitrines alongside other ephemera from an artist's life, they suggest process: choices of color, habits of mixing, while also resembling accidental abstractions.
This ambiguity connects to a longstanding question in my practice. As a young artist, I associated professionalism with arriving at a fixed style, in contrast to the openness of the student, who is free to experiment without a defined end. My work continues to explore this tension between discipline and freedom, and between the roles of student and professional artist."—Dan Levenson, 2026
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, Zürich (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; 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.
