I was born in Logroño, La Rioja, Spain. I was trained in sculpture within the Basque Tradition. I mostly do film. I live in New York.

2017 MFA Fine Art Thesis Walkthrough- Daniel Llaria Gaspar from Parsons Art, Media & Technology on Vimeo.

I use film and sculpture to make work that focuses on questions of queerness and class consciousness. Material dialectics are essential to how I think. The politics of representation is also a structural concern, that pushed me to introduce the intimate as a tool to link desire, dialectics and the politics of looking.

Keep me as an Idle (2017) began with a sculptural idea: to film erect dicks in continuous motion with a self-made dolly, the camera literally encircling the phallus. The initial concept was to make a visually cynical commentary on masculinity and online hook-up culture. This was transformed by my reading of José Esteban Muñoz’s work and, specifically, the idea of queerness as a potential space for momentary utopias.

Class consciousness during the Fordism/Post-Fordism shift has become an important interest in my practice since I moved to NYC particularly since the US election. You’re no better at swimming that you were at the beginning (2016) was inspired by Chantal Akerman’s News From Home (1973) and conceived as a performative gesture on my arrival in the city. The gendered generational gap central to her movie is mimicked here with a special focus on class mobility and the relation mother / queer-child.

In the studio, I am working on two separate series. The ones under the working title The Get-Rich have the coverall as a central signifier too. Due to the nature of sculptural media the operation here refers to a certain left nostalgia, one that is simultaneously cynical and solemn.

The Retrieval Series is another ongoing body of work that emerged out of my collage practice. Formally, they are mockery of the Basque art tradition that I was trained in but my main interest here is the retrieval of a campy type of iconoclasm.