'Tokyo Rain' - Solo show, Wynwood Miami

Born in Essex, UK in 1974, Dan Kitchener (also known as DANK) always knew he wanted to be an artist. As a child, he filled the pages of sketchbook after sketchbook. It’s in those early days that Kitchener first absorbed what would become career spanning influences on his work: Japanese cartoons, black and white Samurai films, Godzilla and monster movies, Manga, and typography.

Kitchener’s otherworldly, cinematic style today stems from those early influences and techniques he developed as a young animator working with motion graphics. Later in life, Kitchener’s travels to Japan cemented his obsession for Japanese culture and rainy nights. A painting by Dan Kitchener often starts with a photograph he’s taken from a moment in his real life.

The title of the show, Tokyo Rain, invokes a common scene Kitchener finds himself in: in the middle of the night, as rain pours down, he stands still as the city scurries around him, running for cover from the storm. What eventually translates to canvas is an ethereal, impressionistic, snapshot of that moment in time. He captures the kinetic energy of the moment with saturated colors, blurred lines and epic scale seemingly impossibly through the nozzle of a spray can.

Tokyo Rain is Kitchener’s first solo show in the U.S. and at Goldman Global Arts Gallery. While his public mural practice is vast, this exhibition illustrates the genesis of Kitchener’s studio practice from photograph, to sketch, to ‘painted sketch’, to fully realized works of art. Viewers may recognize his work from his giant mural painted inside the Wynwood Walls in 2019. It remains one of the most photographed and engaging murals inside the museum walls