FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 2023
Simulacre: Dhiren Dasu Augmented Reality Enabled Book Release Event & Exhibition at Santa Monica Art Museum
Los Angeles, CA – Dhiren Dasu presents his new augmented reality (AR) enabled book, Simulacre, published by Hat & Beard Press, in conjunction with the 501c3 arm Invisible Republic, at Santa Monica Art Museum on April 1, 2023, at 5:00 PM.
The artist will be present for a book signing as well as a tour of artworks exhibiting in Santa Monica Art Museum’s exhibition Looking West. A ticket includes general admission to the museum and its exhibition Looking West. Copies of Simulacre will be available to purchase.
1219 3rd Street Promenade
Santa Monica, CA 90401
Simulacre (sĭm′yə-lā′kər, -lăk′ər), n. Archaic
Something closely resembling another;
An image or representation of something;
A slight, unreal, or vague semblance of something;
An effigy, image, representation;
Carbon copy, duplicate, image, likeness, reduplication, replica, reproduction
Under the moniker of Shapeshifter7, Dasu has been making art since 1996. Dasu makes artworks that echo and recompose the architectural spaces he photographs, turning them into immersive spaces while exploring the nexus of photography, collage, symbols, and perception. The AR component of the book gives the viewer yet another angle to truly appreciate the depth of some of his pieces, and become a participant, not just a static observer.
“The works for Simulacre were created from my travel photographs,” says Dasu. “The entities that arose from these photo collages reveal the nature of the places and the people who created them. The works in Simulacre look like faces—human, android, robot, or animal. In the words of René Magritte from his epochal work The Treachery of Images, ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe.’ My works are juxtapositions of inanimate architecture and objects. It takes a viewer to complete the artifice of sentience.”
Dasu grew up in India, Iran, Kuwait and California, which blessed him with a cross-cultural perspective, respect for divergent viewpoints and a passion for travel.
Language, art, architecture, commerce, digital technologies and history all meld together into the shared human experience/consensual hallucination that is our world in the 21st century… and the world of Simulacre.
For decades, he has photographed urban landscapes, monuments, buildings, bridges, skyscrapers, elevators, machinery and other artifacts of our human existence. As this body of work began to coalesce and the poetry—triggered by the imagery—was spilling out, the themes at play in his subconscious mind became clear.
Simulacre deals with colonialism and its bastard child—consumerism. The world was transformed root and stem by the cultural exchanges of the past half millennium. Christopher Columbus’s misguided arrival in the Americas has consequences that still reverberate today. Tobacco, potatoes, chocolate, chili peppers, tomatoes, vanilla, rubber, corn and pineapples were all introduced to the rest of the world post 1492. Diseases, horses, guns, microbes, the concept of owning land and myriad abstract ideas flowed the other way.
From the micro to the macro, abstract human thought is rendered into three dimensions using all the elements available to us and novel compounds that we cooked up. Simulacre is about the powers of perception and our ability to manipulate information and our sensory inputs to match our preconceptions and vice-versa.
As described by artist Derek Boshier in the book’s introduction: “Dhiren Dasu’s work is always more complex than at first observation. I have heard it described as architectural collage. It is so much more. Yes, the basic constructs are architectural forms to which he composites images and this is very interesting. The images mostly compose into heads and faces. An aspect which is also fascinating is that these heads have such varied human characteristics. They bring together a large range of human emotions explicit in each face. The faces speak to you of so many different human conditions.”
Dasu worked closely with the engineering team at Hoverlay, a leading fine art and experience Augmented Reality (AR) platform, developing a bespoke AR rendition for Simulacre.
Dasu’s works have been featured at Grand Avenue Augmented, Los Angeles; Nostalgia, KaleidoAR/Launch House, Beverly Hills; How The Computer Sees, Gallorie, Dubai, U.A.E.; Click, VITA Arts Center, Ventura, U.S.A.; Images of LA, Jack House Gallery, Portsmouth, U.K.
The art featured in Simulacre is currently on display at the Santa Monica Art Museum, for a group show titled LOOKING WEST, where his work encompasses themes of colonialism and surveillance which are literally masked behind anthropomorphic depictions of spaces transformed by collage and augmented reality.
His early works were published in the seminal San Francisco/Tokyo culture and lifestyle publication: Zavtone: Magazine for digital age of new future, spacey & dance.
Dasu has collaborated with artist Jan Lange. He animated and creative-directed a series of short films for Martin Lawrence Galleries with works by Takashi Murakami, Salvador Dali, Mark Kostabi, Kerry Hallam, Robert Deyber, Philippe Bertho, and Douglas Hoffman.
He has also worked with surrealist feminist artist Penny Slinger since 2000 on animation, sculpture, film, installations and music including the scenography for the 2019 couture show at Christian Dior’s legendary Paris atelier on 30 Avenue Montaigne. He regularly collaborates with legendary pop artist Derek Boshier on films, animations, books, and NFTs.
“As with most work that explores new territory, Simulacre challenges the viewer to re-examine how they perceive photography, construction, and digital art. It forms its own unique genre and has the aesthetic and attention to detail necessary to ensure its recognition and longevity as a masterful work.”
“Dasu’s poetic commentaries serve to reinforce the sharpness of his critical eye and judgment, as well as adding dimensions to the appreciation of the work, dimensions which are related both to personal experience and finely honed observation. Humor blends with satire as he reconstructs elements of a man-made world to reflect what lies beneath and within these structures, skillfully bringing sentience to the inanimate.”
—Penny Slinger
“Dhiren Dasu is everywhere in this considered travel diary of the faces of a neo-constructivist worldview. These images, meticulously produced here, are a labor, a creation, a series of places and points of time and times. Dasu’s poetic, sometimes comedically caustic but always illuminating, text accompanies the work.”
“Architecture is often considered a product of the culture it was designed for. Dasu’s personalized collage assembly reveals not only the beauty but the character of the places the work dissects and reconstructs into an immediate and new landscape that you can’t unsee.”
—Bil Brown
Hat & Beard Press / Invisible Republic
Out Now!
Die-cut hardcover, 168 pages
11.8 in. x 11.8 in.
29.972 cm. x 29.972 cm.
Foreword by Derek Boshier
Essay by Bil Brown
Afterword by Penny Slinger
