David
Datuna is so excited to
create his art that gets up at 4am in order to get to his studio. And his enthusiasm is extremely infectious.
Like hundreds of thousands of others,
Datuna escaped the USSR during the cold war for ‘cultural and artistic
freedom’. He grew up in totalitarian
Georgia, where any appearance of difference was discouraged violently (his
father got arrested 7 times for listening to Elvis…), and ended up in
hyper-liberal downtown New York. He now makes vibrant pop art sculptures of
flags (Jasper Johns 2.0), and collage-portraits.
His work’s are totally fascinating: in Mr.
President: Legacy he made an outline of Barack Obama made of tiny pictures
of Abraham Lincoln, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr all covered in various
broken glasses with different plus and minus focal lenses – representing the
love and hate for Obama. He is also an
early adopter of Google Glass and surrounds himself with nerds (loveable nerds)
who help him to create a hyperreal augmented reality for his audiences.
Sadly, Datuna was recently diagnosed
with lung cancer and has to negotiate chemotherapy into his 15-hour work
days. But this doesn’t stop him from
jetting off to the enormous Basal art show/market in Miami to debut his
intriguing techno-art, Viewpoint of
Billions.
The only problem with being cutting edge
with technology is the inevitable collision of somewhere between Moore’s and
Sontag’s laws – that technology becomes redundant so quickly that it becomes a
bit…camp. Google Glass was an impressively
futuristic game changer, which excited large parts of the Internet, but somehow
already seems like old news.
Director Brian Bayerl has matched the tone of the film with the art of its
subject: it’s playful, bright and proudly pop.
It is easy to watch, regardless of your interest in modern art, and has
an overwhelming sense of good solid fun.
It is said that Datuna is one of the most collectible artists in the
world at the moment, but it seems like he also the most fun – the rarest of
combinations and a real achievement.
Datuna: Portrait of America won the overall best feature award at Raindance 2015
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