It was hard to resist Nick Dahlen’s fluid and colorful paintings when he first came to wide attention five years ago. His classically influenced, highly designed works are even more appealing now, upstyled by an artist who’s rapidly grown into his own fierce talent.
Dahlen’s chess game painting, and the smaller pieces near it, are part of an exhibition just ended in Los Angeles at The Landing gallery. The images above are from his solo show in Taipei earlier this year. This is major recognition for an illustrator-designer and one-time-tagger who less than a decade ago was showing work strung up with duct tape on outdoor walls (see the earlier Art Junkie post, here).
Also, his prints are instant sellouts. He pulled this six color screenprint – called Juicy Bite – by hand for an edition of 20 and there are plenty of others on his Big Cartel site here.
His artistic influences – Kandinsky, Picasso, Le Corbusier and others – continue to guide him, Dahlen says, without any sacrifice to his own creativity. He continues to provide illustrations for the advertising industry and other clients while he works on his art.
Nick Dahlen’s Instagram here.
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I coud see the Picasso influence, and love it. Lots of artists ape Picasso rather than being inspired by him. Dahlen plays notes off the original melody without imitting it.
What a great way of putting it – playing off the original melody. Thanks for that.