Biography
Daniel Maalman is a visual artist and musician and he moves back and forth between those two worlds which sometimes cross eachother, and sometimes have an overlap. Technology and electronics play in both disciplines an important role. Daniels installations and sculptures are conceptual and often have an interactive element. The meaning of his works is in most cases only visible when the audience participates in his work. Each work has a specific theme and functions as a petri-dish in the laboratory of the artist, where the reactions and the behavior of the visitors form the results of that particular research. Daniels work has a socially critical undertone with plenty of irony and an absurdistic finish. Communication is a re-occuring theme in his work, often with the emphasis on the social side effects of the convenience factor.
In 2010 I graduated from the AKI/ArtEZ Academy for Fine Art in Enschede (NL), in the department Media Art/Mixed Media. My work mainly consists of large scale interactive installations with a conceptual undertone. The audience participation is always an important part of the work, and sometimes even necessary to complete the artwork. Psychology and communication are important motives that I use with the aid of absurdism, design and technology to create ‘dysfunctional inventions’ that the audience can interact with. After my studies, I worked autonomously on developing new installational works that I exhibited on several artfairs and exhibitions.
I have been involved in media-art (interactive installations), video, drawing, conceptual art, writing and electronic music. My motivation behind getting into art is that from an early age on, I had an interest to communicate a certain thought or idea in a conceptual, imaginative way to others.
This is a strong motivation for me in my artistic choices: how the audience perceives my work is an intrinsic part of the work. It seems to me that this motive is the motor for my ideas: to be able to suck the audience into an idea to communicate the thought, with their input or participation as a catalyzer. I realised that an important motive for me is that I want the viewer to become part of the work.
