MFA 2022 Artists MFA 2022 Artists: Daniel S. DeLuca

MFA 2022 Artists

Daniel S. DeLuca

UMass Dartmouth 2022 MFA Thesis Exhibition

About Daniel S. DeLuca

Daniel S. DeLuca is a project-based and concept-oriented artist, currently working on site-responsive artistic research projects involving cybernetics, systems, and artificial intelligence. Daniel is an artist and organizer, having created performance projects for the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He is the former director of Mobius Inc., an experimental artist group and artist-run center in Boston. Daniel has presented work nationally and internationally with Grace Exhibition Space (New York City), Defibrillator Gallery (Chicago), Living Arts (Tulsa), Le Lieu (Quebec City), Venice International performance Art Week (Venice, Italy), Bbeyond (Belfast), and in numerous public contexts. He is an MFA candidate and Distinguished Art Fellow in the graduate program in Sculpture at UMass Dartmouth.

Statement

My work evolves from interdisciplinary research and creates conditions for interactive experimentation through performative, sculptural, socially engaged, and conceptual practices. This project-based work utilizes context-sensitive strategies to connect meaning to form on a variety of scales. Creating playful points of connection, engaged discussions, provoking questions, and disrupting conventional patterns of behavior are all important aims of my projects in general. They are designed to utilize resources at hand, be minimally invasive, temporary, and respond to the complex set of indices created by the unique assemblages of vernacular materials in any given location.

The interplay between the conceptual architecture, subjects, site, in-situ resource utilization, and community engagement create a kind of feedback mechanism in the system of the work. Each component and design element feeds into the other which helps characterize the work as an indeterminate, contingent, and fugitive practice.