Dean West Photographs

Dean West Photographs

I’ve been wanting to feature more photography on MoMa and these Dean West photographs have been on my to-do list for some time.

What initially drew me to Dean’s work was a kind of uncanny valley feeling to his In Pieces series of photographs with famed lego sculptor Nathan Sawaya.

There’s a claustrophobic uneasiness to looking at such minutely constructed images. A hyper-staged reality so heightened it gives you vertigo.

While Hopper and Hockney (and probably other painters with surnames beginning with Ho… double points for Howard Hodgkin) loom large in influence and subject the underlying feeling of these Dean West photographs seem more Lynchian in nature. The strangely weird, almost threatening tension bubbling up beneath the ever so prim and perfectly choreographed surface.

Each photo in the In Pieces series contains a handmade lego sculpture by Sawaya that reflects back the carefully constructed reality that West builds in each scene.

Under The Sun

If you need to get up for air after studying the In Pieces series then West’s beach series Under The Sun is the perfect antidote (check out the artist’s website to see the full series).

There’s still plenty of painstaking construction going on to create these vast open air scenes but the end effect is one of limitless space, freedom and blissful escape. The large scale of each print (most are more than a metre square) emphasise the boundless feeling of white sandy beaches stretching out into the blue-green ocean.

About The Artist

Dean West was born in Australia in 1983 and studied at the Queensland College of Art. He’s won dozens of awards, exhibited all over the world and now lives and works in New York.

Dean West Online

• Dean West · Website
• Dean West · Saatchi Art
• Dean West · Facebook
• Dean West · Twitter
• Dean West · Youtube