“…and the rest of the world is really shut out…the volume’s really turned up. There’s no room for my own thoughts; there’s dissolving of self, where the painting has more presence than I do.”
–Xylor Jane

Set of Steps is a presentation of 14 new drawings on paper, along with 6 works from 2020 and 2019. Each drawing is made according to a specific set of steps: recursive instructions, rules, and if/thens which determine what to draw. After the first line, the drawing process is a chain reaction which generates a predetermined—yet unknown—outcome. The drawing process is repetitive and visually hypnotic. An afterimage will float over the area on which I’m working. The longer I draw, the more my muscle memory takes over. When things are going well, drawing becomes a portal to a trance state, where I lose track of my thoughts. At the same time, the high-stakes process keeps me hyper-focused on the present moment. As long as I keep my eye locked on the nib, the drawing keeps going, even if I briefly forget that I exist.

Dana Piazza lives and works in Lenox, Massachusetts. He has exhibited in solo exhibitions at Art Austerlitz in Austerlitz, New York, Thompson Giroux Gallery in Chatham, New York, and Room 68 in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Upcoming shows include a solo exhibition at Soapbox Arts in Burlington, Vermont, and two-person exhibitions with Audrey Stone at Bernay Fine Art in Great Barrington, Massachusetts and with Tamara Zahaykevich at Turley Gallery in Hudson, New York. His numerous group exhibitions include Flat Files at OyG at Ortega y Gasset Projects in Brooklyn, New York, Concentrated at Galerie Manqué in Brooklyn, New York, Art on Paper with Muriel Guépin Gallery in New York, New York, and Guilty Pleasures at Geoffrey Young Gallery in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Dana Piazza received a BFA magna cum laude from the School of Art+Design at Purchase College in 2010.