Amsterdam’s KochXBos gallery recently opened a solo exhibition by local art hero, Dadara. Life Inside a Pixel is the long-awaited exhibition from the famou illustrator, designer, cartoonist, painter, and performance artist, built around the ideas and experiences from his Solipmission Installation at Burning Man 2017.
For the aforementioned installation, the Dutch artist and his team were locked inside a black box in the desert for the duration of the event. Inspired by everyday life and the perception of reality through the screens of our phone and computers, Dadara wanted to experience the festival through the experience of others, by talking to the visitors that came by his installation. After a week of painting their vision of outside reality on the inside of the box, the team painted over the works and came outside for a beautiful sunrise on the last day of the festival. This was the most intense experience the artist has endured and upon his return to Amsterdam, he needed a week to process it all.
Living in a “missing pixel of reality” left a huge impact on him, so after the cathartic week at home, he felt an urge to paint images that include boxes. Small, big, grey and colorful, the ideas came pouring from his brush and as he was playing with familar everyday objects, historic iconography, scientific concepts, classic art, and purely psychedelic imagery, Dadara created a series of works that extended the idea of a missing pixel to new spheres. Starting from a colorful creation that sparked the whole series and ending with a revision of Katsushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa, this body of work feels exceptionally coherent and complete, while intentionally leaving a lot of questions unanswered.
Photo credit by @SashaBogojev.
