Denton Peter McCabe was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1983. Initially working and creating as a composer, rave DJ, and session guitarist; McCabe began creating visual art with the intention of having work that could be featured on his musical releases. McCabe’s body of work is focused on collage, painting, works on paper, photography, video art, musical composition and sound art. His work explores clashing elements—often combining abstraction with glimpses of the human figure, comic book characters, canvas scraps, abject work from his archives, or found video clips and sound bites.
Drawing from diverse techniques inspired by abstract expressionism, glitch art, graffiti, and pop culture, as well as his own experiences as a Native American of Diné and Akimel O’odham heritage; McCabe’s work is restlessly experimental and exploratory. His mixed media collages combine imagery taken from comic books and fetish magazines with his own digital prints and pages from his mixed media sketchbooks. In his paintings and works on panels, he applies layers of wet media to the substrate, at times his technique is very controlled and deliberate, at others it can be chaotic and emotionally driven. McCabe’s video work focuses on the endless manipulation of found footage, drawing from numerous sources.
McCabe had a 2017 solo exhibition of his drawings and collages at Fourth Dimension Studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico. McCabe has also shown in group shows in Rome, Santa Fe, Taos, Albuquerque, Las Cruces and New Smyrna. He was an Associate Artist in Residence at The Atlantic Center for the Arts in June and July of 2017. His musical compositions have been performed by RE: New Music (Chicago), the Parhelion Trio (New York), Musical Amoeba (New York) and Robin Meiksins (Chicago). He has created music videos for electronic musicians CFOR, Wurm, and Kevin Sting.
Drawing from diverse techniques inspired by abstract expressionism, glitch art, graffiti, and pop culture, as well as his own experiences as a Native American of Diné and Akimel O’odham heritage; McCabe’s work is restlessly experimental and exploratory. His mixed media collages combine imagery taken from comic books and fetish magazines with his own digital prints and pages from his mixed media sketchbooks. In his paintings and works on panels, he applies layers of wet media to the substrate, at times his technique is very controlled and deliberate, at others it can be chaotic and emotionally driven. McCabe’s video work focuses on the endless manipulation of found footage, drawing from numerous sources.
McCabe had a 2017 solo exhibition of his drawings and collages at Fourth Dimension Studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico. McCabe has also shown in group shows in Rome, Santa Fe, Taos, Albuquerque, Las Cruces and New Smyrna. He was an Associate Artist in Residence at The Atlantic Center for the Arts in June and July of 2017. His musical compositions have been performed by RE: New Music (Chicago), the Parhelion Trio (New York), Musical Amoeba (New York) and Robin Meiksins (Chicago). He has created music videos for electronic musicians CFOR, Wurm, and Kevin Sting.