Dustin Dis
In his artwork the internationally active designer and sound and video artist Dustin Dis explores perceptual models of everyday life, which involve the interplay of all of the senses but always accent their interaction in connection with the visual. The current work is from a photo series of stuffed animals and miniature figures dunked in fluids, which in their presentation as close-ups take on a threatening appearance in the eye of the beholder. The blurry objects in fluid analyze psychical conditions in which reality is apprehended only in erratic thrusts, whereby its validity can no longer be tested using objective criteria. Problems arising from various forms of alcohol and narcotic consumption show the underestimated necessity of therapeutic and medical treatments that allow the individual to take other approaches toward overcoming resistances involving social and personal problems. Often these problems begin with the consumption of alcopops (i.e. the bottled mixed drinks of which the image’s bright coloration is reminiscent), which for youths represent an easy first step into alcoholism. Extreme cases such as delirium tremens – here a Belgian beer of the same name also served the artist as a source of inspiration – are hinted at by the little devil figurine, whose eyes gaze penetratingly through the glass, wavering between hallucination and bodily immobilization. The use of the figures is just as playful as that of alcohol – as a socially accepted drug, which like a maelstrom draws not only the devil in the glass, but also pent-up psychological problems, into the abyss.
