THE LONDON DARE
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
June 2013
The solo show The London Dare by Chinese artist DALeast, curated by Rom Levy, was presented in London in June 2013.
The dark imagery found in DALeast's art is undeniably captivating, woven with intricate detail while focusing on the simple subjects in his pieces. Each of his pieces of art is created using paint to look like thousands of metal shards are coming together to form beautiful shapes, often animals or humans. Within every piece of DALeast’s art, a pop of color observed in the background brings his subject to life. This allows him to focus on the intricacy of his technique while delivering his final product. The use of fractured imagery and contrasting backgrounds serve to give his art a breath of energy and soul that can sometimes be lost in art with a more somber subject matter.
The exhibition was a street art hunt. Murals were painted on seven walls in different parts of the city, and people were invited to go hunting for them using the internet and social media. The first 50 people to find the seven walls received a limited edition print. The trick was that the seventh wall was located in the exhibition venue, which remained closed until the opening.
The enthusiasm generated around this event, with more than 400 hunters registered on the website within the first 24 hours, all finding the first six walls within two days, made it a landmark model for a new kind of street art curating. It relied on the concept of the invisible street artist, acting in the secret shadows of the city and never to be seen, even during the opening event where he was dressed up as a ninja along side six other performers.
It played on the audience’s curiosity, and at the same time, it reinvented deep art-historical concepts : the secrecy and the city roaming that can be found for example in the happenings of the 1960s and 70s, such as Fluxus’ famous collective strolls Flux-Tours.
The dark imagery found in DALeast's art is undeniably captivating, woven with intricate detail while focusing on the simple subjects in his pieces. Each of his pieces of art is created using paint to look like thousands of metal shards are coming together to form beautiful shapes, often animals or humans. Within every piece of DALeast’s art, a pop of color observed in the background brings his subject to life. This allows him to focus on the intricacy of his technique while delivering his final product. The use of fractured imagery and contrasting backgrounds serve to give his art a breath of energy and soul that can sometimes be lost in art with a more somber subject matter.
