A Darker Shade of Dark #1-4

In ‘A Darker Shade of Dark #1-4’ 2012 Daniel Boyd recalibrates his painting technique for the digital realm. The language of the ‘lens’ – his signature device – is applied to moving image. Between swathes of floor to ceiling black we watch an undulation of colour and form. Particles of light dance in the projection, evoking the way reflected light glistens off Boyd’s canvases or streams through his window installations.

‘A Darker Shade of Dark #1-4’ explores dark matter – the invisible substance thought to hold all of space and time and its contents together, but which defies investigation – along with particle physics and indeterminate cosmologies. Using shimmering and shifting fields of animated dots, the four-channel projection reframes dark matter as a metaphor for comprehension: what cannot, is not, and will not be seen. According to Boyd, he made the work ‘just before the discovery of the ’God particle’ [Higgs Boson particle] by the Hadron Collider. And not being able to see that, but knowing that it is there, intrigued me. I saw dark matter as a metaphor for comprehension’ – or the limits of knowledge.

The somewhat psychedelic soundtrack, commissioned for the work, is by Ryan Grieve of the Canyons, and adds to the mystery of what lies beyond the reach of empirical investigation, creating a dreamlike cosmology.