Sweet Liberty brings together 15 years of work by painter Dan Colen (born 1979), one of the “bad boys” of the New York art world who emerged onto the scene in the early 2000s alongside artists like Dash Snow and Ryan McGinley. Witty, shocking, poignant and nihilistic, Colen’s art presents a portrait of contemporary America and investigates the acts of producing and looking at art.Alongside significant early works such as “Me, Jesus and the Children” (2001–03), this publication features paintings from Colen’s long-running Gum and Trash series, as well as four installations in which Colen appropriates imagery from the mass media and American subcultures. This volume marks, in Colen’s own words, “the first time I’ve been able to present the full range of my work and the wide-ranging ideas, crafts, materials, technologies and processes that I engage with.”

Sweet Liberty brings together 15 years of work by painter Dan Colen (born 1979), one of the “bad boys” of the New York art world who emerged onto the scene in the early 2000s alongside artists like Dash Snow and Ryan McGinley. Witty, shocking, poignant and nihilistic, Colen’s art presents a portrait of contemporary America and investigates the acts of producing and looking at art.Alongside significant early works such as “Me, Jesus and the Children” (2001–03), this publication features paintings from Colen’s long-running Gum and Trash series, as well as four installations in which Colen appropriates imagery from the mass media and American subcultures. This volume marks, in Colen’s own words, “the first time I’ve been able to present the full range of my work and the wide-ranging ideas, crafts, materials, technologies and processes that I engage with.”