In such a vibrant arts community as the Twin Cities, with internationally renowned printmaking collectives such as Aesthetic Apparatus and Burlesque of North America, how is that Daniel Luedtke, aka Danimal -- a musician with no formal education in visual art, working as a one-man design studio -- has become one of the scene's hottest printmakers? Two words: concept and color.
Producing highly conceptual works punctuated with dazzling color and almost hallucinatory geometric transmogrifications, Luedtke has made a quick and walloping splash in the music community with pupil-constricting album art, posters and T-shirts for some of the Twin Cities' most interesting (rather than popular) bands.
From his home/design studio in south Minneapolis, Luedtke attempts to explain his fascination with color, saying, "Thinking of it linguistically, [color] is like a noun and a verb. It can be something that just carries the idea, or it can be the idea itself."
While the idea of "color as concept" is nothing new (Fauvist painters were emphasizing color over form back at the turn of the 20th century), it is a rare, and captivating, approach among local postermakers. While others try to make their illustrations appear iconic, favoring black, primary, or monochromatic prints, Luedtke seeks intensity.
"I use really bright colors," he said. "It's probably a combination of being inspired by '60s Pop Art, and growing up in the '80s and '90s. I mean, I had a fluorescent yellow skateboard that had a hot pink scorpion on the bottom."
Illuminated in these bursts of pigmentation are surreal and throttling images. Juxtaposing geometric abstractions with a twisted cartoonist's sense of humor and strongly sexual themes, Luedtke's prints convey obliquely articulated messages and emotions that one feels intuitively even when the encryption can't quite be hacked.
In a 2009 exhibition at Highpoint Center for Printmaking in Minneapolis, he blanketed the wall around his displayed prints with banana wallpaper, depicting interlocking black and yellow wireframes of the suggestively shaped fruit--a symbolic backdrop nudging onlookers to calibrate their interpretations through a sexual lens.
In a more recent print, "Her Left, Her Right," three dithered illustrations portraying a nude female walk upside down across a series of headshots of the same woman. The whole image is swathed in blotches of color that both accent and obscure her features. While the message is vague, the mood is absolutely palpable.
