About
Daniel Man works with painting, wall works and installations conceived for the space. He was born in London in 1969 and lives and works in Augsburg and Munich.
His paintings develop layer by layer, without sketches and without a preconceived motif. His installations change with every step the viewer takes. For him, working in the studio and working outdoors can no longer be separated; they belong together like breathing in and out.
The PainThing
Galerie Andreas Binder, Munich, 2026
Photo: Kilian Blees
Origins
In 1977, at the age of seven, Daniel Man moved from Hong Kong to Germany. Chinese calligraphy has been with him since early childhood; his painting would be unthinkable without its technique and composition. From his father he learned a principle of Chinese landscape painting: space is created with very few means. Mist and clouds are not painted but intuited from the picture as a whole, and the eye wanders through it from top to bottom.
A renovation in the new home also left its mark. The restaurant space was too large, so his father and a carpenter built an angular pagoda into it: a room within a room. A mural inside opened up yet another space, a painted one.
Graffiti
from 1984
In 1984 he became active in the graffiti scene under the name CODEAK. He remained active for almost fifteen years, and his work took him around the world. He learned to adapt to constantly changing spatial situations. To this day he is convinced that outdoor space demands a different language from the sheltered space indoors.
Studies
until 2005
At the time, the graffiti scene was heavily shaped by stylistic dogmas. To break free of them, he went to the academy. He studied fine art at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig under Walter Dahn and, from 2003, at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste München under Markus Oehlen. In 2005 he graduated with a diploma and became a Meisterschüler. Walter Dahn told him something he has never forgotten: he should let go, because his roots would come back one day.
From graffiti he brought figuration to the academy; from the academy he took abstraction with him. It was as a student that he became interested in processes of change, displacement and growth, in their intermediate stages and contrasts.
Spaces
2005–2013
Straight after his studies, Sprüth Magers Projekte took him into its programme; in 2006 he showed “Mothership Blueprints” there. From 2009 he was represented by Galerie Nusser & Baumgart in Munich. Exhibitions in museums and galleries followed, among them at the Weserburg in Bremen and the Kunsthalle Barmen in Wuppertal, as well as in Silkeborg, Hamburg, Zurich and Leipzig.
Most of these works were installations conceived for the space. He responded to the existing architecture with wall paintings and, for each site, set canvases, sculptures and paper cut-outs in relation to one another. Walking through the rooms, one saw the constellations differently from every position.
Mothership Blueprints
Sprüth Magers Projekte, Munich, 2006
Photo: Daniel Man
Systems of order
until 2017
For a long time, his paintings followed preconceived ideas. He was captivated by visual representations that order complex relationships and make them visible: explanatory models from physics and quantum physics, graphic notation, family trees and mind maps, Robert Fludd’s seventeenth-century alchemical illustrations. Over time he felt constrained by these preconceived forms.
For a long time he had wanted to depict the graffiti and street art scene as a Gesamtkunstwerk; Mark Lombardi’s sociograms showed him how. He sent questions to artists from his closest circle and turned their answers into the four-metre-long painting the InSight from Side Out. In doing so, he realised that what interested him above all were processes and how they unfold.
Tales from above
Galerie Molliné, Stuttgart, 2013
Photo: Daniel Man
Public space
since 2014
Walter Dahn had been right: around ten years after his diploma, requests for murals began coming in again, and they have done so regularly ever since. He himself calls this return a re-import: what he works out in the studio flows back into public space. For the kiosk in front of the Lenbachhaus in Munich he developed Eis, Eisbaby, a painted design that changed in phases. To launch it in 2014, he sprayed the kiosk entirely black, then broke up the surface with white lines. A colourful geometric composition followed, then a stencilled text and a camouflage pattern, until the kiosk seemed to merge with its surroundings. In 2018 he translated the kiosk painting into an installation for the exhibition “I’M A BELIEVER” at the Lenbachhaus.
Together with Sebastian Giussani and Ina Kapitola, he created Common Wall in 2017, a sixteen-metre-wide sculpture in steel and aluminium in the courtyard of the Einstein 28 education centre in Munich. He is permanently represented by two sculptural works in the colonnade of STOA169 in Polling.
Eis, Eisbaby
Installation in I’M A BELIEVER, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München, 2018
Photo: Simone Gänsheimer
Courtesy: Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München
Paper
2017–2020
Cutting out motifs left him with scraps of paper, which for a long time he set aside and stacked on top of one another. Almost a year later he noticed that the stack had unintentionally become a work in its own right. From such layered paper frames he developed works whose colours he tuned to one another and which gained spatial depth.
In 2020, for the exhibition “Sorry for the inconvenience” at Kunstverein Ebersberg, he built a tunnel through three rooms: large-format works on paper, staggered one metre apart. “As long as viewers move through the tunnel, they are ‘trapped’ in this colour corridor; it envelops them,” he said in 2023 in conversation with Anne Vieth. Only from outside did the corridor become visible as a whole. How the impression changed depended on the pace of one’s own steps.
Sorry for the inconvenience
Kunstverein Ebersberg, 2020
Photo: Daniel Man
Painting
since 2017
Today the process itself comes first. Daniel Man works without sketches or designs; the form follows the process. Where a line ends is something he decides only while painting, depending on everything that is already happening in the picture.
He usually works each layer of colour through to completion. It stands like a sentence to which the next layer responds. Depending on colour and opacity, the response either erases what came before or works together with it, so that both remain visible. Because he often paints over the picture from its edges, views open up as if through a keyhole. The comparison came from a visitor; he found it apt. Airbrush lays down soft, misty areas; hard-edged forms above them open up pictorial spaces, while fine lines offer a delicate counterweight.
Just Another Critical Experience
2023
Acrylic, pigment ink on linen, 180 × 140 cm
Photo: Kilian Blees
Just Another Critical Experience
Detail
Schlüssellöcher
2025
Acrylic, pigment ink on linen
110 × 90 cm
Recent work
2023–2026
In the most recent paintings, an earlier relationship seems to be reversed. Where fine patterns once set the structure, bold, confident applications of colour now form the basis. The keyhole principle opens up and loses its rigidity. He works mainly with acrylic and, once again, increasingly with airbrush.
Galerie Andreas Binder in Munich has represented him since 2018. In its spaces, canvases and wall painting come together as a spatial whole, most recently in 2026 in “The PainThing”, his fourth exhibition there.
He himself considers the division into phases secondary. In the same conversation he said: “What interests me much more are the relationships the works have with one another.”
between thoughts
augsburg contemporary, Augsburg, 2024
Photo: Daniel Man
The PainThing
Galerie Andreas Binder, Munich, 2026
Photo: Kilian Blees
Daniel Man
Photo: Bruno Tenschert
Daniel Man
1969
Born in London
1977
Moved from Hong Kong to Germany at the age of seven
Lives and works in Augsburg and Munich
Education
Studied fine art under Walter Dahn
Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig
2003–2005
Studied fine art under Markus Oehlen
Akademie der Bildenden Künste München
2005
Diploma and Meisterschüler
Akademie der Bildenden Künste München
Selected solo exhibitions and projects
2026
The PainThing
Galerie Andreas Binder, Munich
2024
between thoughts
augsburg contemporary, Augsburg
2024
Wandering Ghosts
Städtische Galerie im Rathausfletz, Neuburg an der Donau
2023
In Painting We Trust
Galerie Andreas Binder, Munich
2023
Schönheit und Wahrheit, with Serena Ferrario and Sebastian Giussani
Rathausgalerie Kunsthalle, Munich
2021
FOR FREE*
Galerie Andreas Binder, Munich
2020
Sorry for the inconvenience
Kunstverein Ebersberg
2018
game over, please insert coin, with Hadrien Dussoix
Galerie Andreas Binder, Munich
2015
Wollfront, with Sebastian Giussani
Kesselhaus, Kunstverein Bamberg
2014–2016
Eis, Eisbaby
Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München
2014
Hangover Gardens, with Ted Green
Kunstverein Friedberg (Hessen)
2014
The InSight from SideOut
Fluxus Studio, Düsseldorf
2013
Tales from above
Galerie Molliné, Stuttgart
2010
Only a butterfly is a good fly
Reinking Projekte, Hamburg
2006
Mothership Blueprints
Sprüth Magers Projekte, Munich
2006
One of the first things
Under Construction, Istanbul
Selected group exhibitions and projects
2025
Klasse Walter Dahn
TRAFIK Projekte, Brühl
2025
Shades of Paint
Galerie Noah, Augsburg
2023
POLYCHROM
Halle 1 – Raum für Kunst im Glaspalast, Augsburg
2022
Transformationen 22 CARE
Cohaus Kloster Schlehdorf
2020
STOA169
Polling
2018
I’M A BELIEVER
Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München
2017
Urban Art Biennale
Völklinger Hütte, Völklingen
2014
Existenzielle Bildwelten
Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst, Bremen
2009
Urban Art – Werke aus der Sammlung Reinking
Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst, Bremen
2008
Call it what you like! Collection Rik Reinking
KunstCentret Silkeborg Bad, Silkeborg
2007
Still on and non the wiser
Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal
2007
Wakin up nights
de Pury & Luxembourg, Zurich
2005
Favoriten
Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München
2005
7
Sprüth Magers Lee, London
Grants
2022
Independent project grant from the Hypo-Kulturstiftung
Munich
2011
Grant from the Erwin und Gisela von Steiner Stiftung
2004
Grant from the Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Kunst und Wissenschaft