Daniel Goldenberg has been painting and actively exhibiting his works since 1985, and is now establishing himself as one of the country’s leading hyperrealists. While being mostly autodidact, his previous creative jobs helped him to develop his remarkable skills in hyperrealistic painting. In 1980s, he worked as a background painter for the animated film Valhalla. Afterwards, he worked for Zoological Museum in Copenhagen, where he produced illustrations of plants and animals, as well as large murals for the museum’s permanent exhibition.
Daniel Goldenberg’s hyperrealistic style and the choice of motifs demand technique and patience. His motif selection is known from classical oil painting through the centuries. It is Goldenberg’s intention that his paintings in addition to hyperrealism have a strong but yet understated mystical dimension; something that he feels is far stronger than ordinary storytelling, which he quite deliberately omits in the works.
During the last year, he often worked with the city motifs depicting Copenhagen; the important part of the process being the aid of his own photos. Photography is integral to his work process. In order to achieve the intended atmosphere, or “magic” if you will, some objects in the painting are changed; people and cars are reduced to a minimum, and power poles, advertising, and wires are removed as well. The choice determining which motifs work, what to crop, and what to change is often an intuitive one, and the adjustments are made up until the point when the final result feels to be “completely right”.
That which Goldenberg captures is not primarily Copenhagen as such (he lives there, and thus it is a motif he has at hand), but, same as in case of his other motifs, the focus lies on his fascination with what he finds are absolutely basic artistic effects, light/shadow, colour and composition.
