Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Dhiren Dasu. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Dhiren, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

The most professionally meaningful project I’ve worked on was with my frequent collaborator, Penny Slinger. We designed the set for the last Christian Dior Couture show at their fabled atelier on Avenue Montaigne in Paris. Maria Grazia Chiuri, Dior’s creative director, asked Penny to create the scenography for her “grand opera.” We visited the location in Paris and took extensive photographs of the building.
Returning to LA, we developed collages based on Penny’s vision, using the elements of air, water, fire, earth, and ether as the aesthetic tones for each of the salons. We then worked on-site for over a month with a team of more than a hundred, including painters, printers, installers, fabricators, sculptors, and gardeners, to cover every wall, floor, and ceiling of this historical building.
One of the areas where my personal touch truly came to the forefront was a series of trompe l’oeil collages. I photographed empty rooms and created surreal, impossible architectural collages inspired by Escher’s techniques. We installed these prints as opaque overlays on the windows. When one looked “out” through the windows, the view was of a surreal interior of the very building they were in, turning the general paradigms of architecture inside out.
We also collaborated with custom fabricators to install a large tree of life, further bringing the outside inside. Additionally, we worked with a sculptor and used laser-scanned models to create four life-size caryatid statues. All of this effort was for two fifteen-minute couture shows on the same day, with the demolition team dismantling the set by the end of the evening.
This project was a dream come true because I was able to bring together many facets of my skillset—design, photography, visual effects, collage, and a love of architecture—into a unique blend of techniques and vision. We were fully supported by Dior and the fabrication and production teams, who were willing to do whatever it took to make the set and experience as transformational as possible. As the artistic directors, we completely transformed the space into a magical, immersive analog set that left all who entered in a dreamlike state. I would love to work on more projects like this in immersive media, film, and fashion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeG7LAgH_lM”

Dhiren, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I make artworks that echo and recompose the subjects I photograph. I am a digital artist who works with photography, animation, poetry and collage. My most recent series is titled Simulacre. In this series, I photograph buildings or cities and then cut and paste elements from these photos into a semblance of a face. By juxtaposing inanimate elements into a structure that to a human eye looks like a face, I aim to capture the soul of a location. I create architectural portraits that represent my experience and the history of a particular location.

I particularly enjoy site specific commissions since I get to reveal the inner soul of a structure. I have been blessed with various commissions to do this. I would like to do more of this.

I am most proud of my book Simulacre (available through Hat & Beard Press). This body of work is an Augmented Reality enabled book that challenges the viewer to re-examine how they perceive symbols, perception, photography, construction, and digital art.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I became a visual artist by experimenting and following my passions and interests. During the period of my life before I began actively creating art, I was under the misapprehension that artists and musicians received inspiration in a perfectly formed vision which they then manifested as a sculpture or a song or a painting or a novel. As an artist for many years now, I’ve learnt that creativity is neither simple nor drops down from the heavens. Rarely a song does write itself or a piece of visual art just falls into place. But in my experience, that is the exception, not the rule.

Instead artists receive inspiration on a daily and ongoing basis from their lives, environments, relationships, personal histories, dreams, aspirations and reactions to the world they find themselves in. Artists create work by practice, experimentation, and effort. Successful creatives are endlessly curious and experimental. To be an artist one needs to believe that they have something unique to share with the world. And to then follow that up by creating, completing and releasing work. Releasing the work is the critical part that allows us to evolve and make space for the next new vision. We are all creatives in our thoughts, it is our actions that make us artists.

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

NFTs solve three of the major hurdles that art collectors face – authentication, display and storage. I believe that this is a viable system that will have its moment in the very near future. I have collaborated with several artists on NFTs which successfully sold. I think the future of NFTS will get clearer and more robust once it is untethered from the crypto currency association. Blockchain is a perfect technology for digital art. I believe that once the blockchain data is directly embedded in the artwork itself as opposed to a separate proof of ownership document, there is much more potential for the NFT format. However, I am not an expert in blockchain technology so it is possible that brighter engineering minds are actively solving this issue. To put it simply, I do believe that NFTs will be a major part of digital art and collecting in the future. As a digital artist, I look forward to being a part of that future.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://shapeshifter7.com
• Instagram: dhiren_dasu
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhirendasu/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeG7LAgH_lM
• Other: https://hatandbeard.com/products/simulacre-by-dhiren-dasu

Image Credits

Art by Dhiren Dasu
Bio photo by Nick Berardi