Marc Dyen

Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA

Artist statement

I photograph compositions that already exist in the urban environment but were never intentionally created as art. I call these discoveries Unintentional Art. Weather, time, human intervention, and decay transform posters, advertisements, painted surfaces, graffiti, and other fragments of the city. Layers are torn away, images overlap, colors fade, and figures become obscured or unexpectedly combined. What begins as commercial or functional imagery can evolve into something resembling collage, abstraction, or painting. My role is not to construct these compositions, but to recognize them. I photograph each scene exactly as I find it, without rearranging or adding elements. That distinction is central to my practice: the city creates the work; I discover and preserve a moment in its evolution. I am drawn to the tension between intention and accident, beauty and deterioration, recognition and abstraction. A face may survive only as an eye; a figure may emerge from layers of imagery; accumulated paint, paper, and damage may become a purely abstract composition. These surfaces are temporary. They may be altered, covered, or removed shortly after I encounter them. Photography allows me to preserve these accidental compositions at the brief moment when they exist. At the heart of the work is a simple idea: beauty doesn’t fade—it evolves.

Artwork