Danny Minnick ‘One Love’ opens at Maddox Gallery
Celebrities flocked to Maddox Gallery, Mayfair on Thursday evening for the VIP private view of ‘ONE LOVE’, the highly anticipated first UK solo exhibition of LA based artist Danny Minnick.
Guests in attendance included: Tamara Ecclestone Rutland and husband Jay Rutland, Amy Jackson, Hugo Taylor, Rosie Fortescue and sister Lily Fortescue, Sophie Hermann, Oscar Scheller, Bradley Theodore, Chloe Lewis, Isabella Summers, Lucy Mecklenburgh and Kimberley Garner.
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The event was kindly sponsored by CÎROC Vodka and Haig Club Clubman Whisky and the VIP crowd enjoyed CÎROC Champagne Cosmos and Haig Club Ginger Apple cocktails as they explored Danny Minnick’s vibrant new exhibition across two floors of the Maddox Gallery flagship Mayfair space. The artist customised CÎROC Vodka and Haig Club Clubman Whisky bottles in his signature style, which were displayed in the gallery.
Canapés were served by Gordon Ramsey’s Maze, including stone bass with ginger honey dressing and avocado puree, chilled summer rolls with fresh vegetables and son in law sauce, teriyaki chicken skewers, tuna tartare rolls, burger sliders with sriracha mayo, parmesan arancini with truffle oil and mini key lime pies.
While his style of painting is often compared to Jean-Michel Basquiat, the characters that feature in Minnick’s paintings often prompt a heartfelt connection to Keith Haring’s work, combining Haring’s humour with Minnick’s whimsical style and sensibility. For the ONE LOVE exhibition Danny Minnick has taken this creative connection a step further with an entire series of new works on canvas in homage, playing with and often replacing the iconic American Pop artist’s figures with Minnick’s own trademark characters.
The title of Minnick’s exhibition evolved from an artwork he created titled ONE LOVE, which was inspired by the overwhelming public response to the recent UK terror attacks. The ONE LOVE artwork evoked some of the most positive reactions from guests at the private view.
The lower ground floor of Maddox Gallery was completely transformed to recreate Danny Minnick’s London studio space, which is normally housed within East London’s Ragged School, the original site of the first Dr Barnardo’s children’s hospital. The ONE LOVE exhibition saw the artist reconstruct his studio so guests could enjoy the experience of being immersed in the artist’s creative surroundings.
Minnick’s work is a riot of dark colour, thick paint, layer upon layer of pigments, fragments, splinters, brush and splatter work. His unique style of abstract expressionism plays host to a clever cast of characters and hidden images that regularly appear. Minnick’s large scale paintings combine oil and spray paints with his signature drawings and are often culled from actual sections of the artist’s worked-over studio floor. “I work on whatever is available to me,” Minnick told Interview Magazine in 2015. “There’s some on canvas, but most of the recent work is from the studio wall. The energy of the wall, of the wood, is totally different than canvas.”
Danny Minnick enjoyed a successful career as a professional skateboarder until a career-ending Achilles tendon injury led to a two-year hiatus and prompted Minnick to focus his energies on painting. A breakout solo show in LA paved the way for Minnick’s expansion into the fine art world and ten years on he is now a highly collected artist and his murals in Tulum Mexico, South Hampton, La Jolla San Diego, Los Angeles and Sag Harbor have gained worldwide attention.
High profile collectors of Minnick’s work include Jessica Alba, Cash Warren, Jamie Hince, Le Bron James, Nick Cassavetes, Michael Citrone, RETNA and Gus Van Sant. The artist recently collaborated with Alba to create a mural for her successful ethical empire The Honest Company.
