MARS presents new paintings by Dani McKenzie at Melbourne Art Fair 2024, following sell out shows in Melbourne, Sydney, and Los Angeles. Dani McKenzie’s practice stems from an interest in street photography, 21st century notions of privacy, and the intrigues of everyday life. Working from personal photographs and observations, her paintings examine the ways we identify with strangers, both as one who is seeing, and one who is being seen. Whilst creating an impression of second-hand people watching, the paintings also reflect McKenzie’s own psychological projections onto the moments she depicts, blurring a boundary not only between the private and the public, but truth and fiction, surface and image. Neither true or false, the work operates in a kind of middle zone, where illusion bumps up against reality and you begin to notice the paint. Dani McKenzie is an Australian born artist, who is currently based in Naarm/Melbourne. Since graduating from the MFA program at the National Art School in Sydney (2016), McKenzie has held several solo exhibitions including recent shows: Room With a View, Long Story Short Gallery, Los Angeles CA (2023); Evening’s Empire, MARS Gallery, Melbourne (2022), and Close to Home, Olsen Gallery, Sydney (2022). She has participated in several group exhibitions including Romancing the Streetscape at Town Hall Gallery in Melbourne (2023), and National Art-Part One: a touring exhibition of prominent alumni from the National Art School over 50 years (2018-2021). In 2019, McKenzie was awarded the Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize in Melbourne, and in 2017 she was a recipient of the Onslow Storrier Residency at la Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. LIVE | DIEGO RAMÍREZ, THE FUEL OF YOUR BROKEN DREAMS (2024) February 22 2024, 7:00 pm – 7:15 pm During the fair, Diego Ramírez will be appearing with a live performance of The Fuel Of Your Broken Dreams. Ramírez recontextualises the song Light My Fire by performing a washed out character in a suit, stained with black goo reminiscent of fuel. Like a foolish demon escaping the depths of the earth, to possess a barrel of crude oil and incarnate human form, this performance imbues the original lyrics by The Doors with a sinister meaning. As per Ramírez’s wider practice, there is a comical fatalism to this work, in which the performer is pathetically lost on the vernissage, begging for combustion. The artist serves as social fuel for a complicit crowd that is willfully ignoring the woes of the world. This performance will take place in the Glenfiddich Bar, Melbourne Art Fair.