Dan Colen’s Secrets and Cymbals, Smoke and Scissors (My Friend Dash’s Wall in the Future) is a life scale recreation of the interior of his friend’s apartment. Reconstructed from snapshot photos, every element has been meticulously crafted and exactly placed. Using the deceptive qualities of trompe l’oiel, each newspaper clipping, flyer, sticker, photograph, and hand-scrawled note has been deceptively rendered in paint. In duplicating this plebeian scene Colen imbues the collected ephemera of a person’s existence with a heightened drama, creating both an exacted portrait and amonument of wonder.