Artist: Dave Pollot
Title: Refract and Reflect
Year created: 2016
Medium: Norma Kamali "All in One Dress" with canvas prints and oil paint
Signed by the artist.
Description of piece: As part of Diamonds Unleashed's Wearable Art Exhibit at the Mandarin Oriental Miami for Art Basel featuring CFDA Lifetime Achievement Award Winner Norma Kamali's Iconic "All in One Dress." Diamonds have a very high refractive index - an optical property in which a large percentage of the light that passes through is bent (refracted) and internally reflected before it's refracted again as it re-enters the world. Dave has always been fascinated by our ability as humans to process our world. Like diamonds, we possess the capacity to transform our inputs, changing them before releasing them back to our surroundings. The robots painted onto this dress represent the light, concepts, strength, and ideas that we consume, possess, and modify before integrating them back in to the world from which their simpler versions came. The removable skirt is made entirely of canvas prints [of thrift store art], each of which has robots painted in oil. The skirt symbolizes our ability and desire to take some existing thing and build upon or repurpose it until it is something new altogether. The relationship between the atoms in a diamond give it its hardness, from which it derives its strength and utility. Like atoms, our relationships to each other, ourselves, and our world are often the source of our strength as individuals. The integration of the robots into the skirt symbolize these relationships.
Artist bio: "I’ve always loved to paint, however I’ve found that my attention span is often outweighed by my eagerness to move on and learn something else. Repurposing old thrift art has become something of an answer to this problem. I take abandoned prints and paintings found at thrift stores and garage sales and carefully use oil paints to make new additions into the old pieces. Part of the challenge is not only taking some piece of pop culture and putting it into a place where it might not belong, but also making it blend in so well that it actually seems that it belongs. My art shouldn’t be too carefully considered for gravity; it’s meant to allow the viewer an escape from the serious, if only for the few moments that they spend looking at some bit of pop culture mischievously inserted into something that might have hung in their grandmother’s house."
Over the course of both Art Miami and Art Basel, Diamonds Unleashed will partner with the Mandarin Oriental Hotel to bring fashion to the forefront. By teaming up with CFDA Lifetime Achievement Award Winner Norma Kamali, DIAMONDS UNLEASHED will create a one-of-a-kind wearable art exhibit in the hotel’s lobby from November 27th through December 4th. The exhibit will highlight the classic Norma Kamali “All in One” dress which will be the canvas for artists whose talents range from nail art, tattooing, illustrating and painting. Each artist will customize the dresses by interpreting the DIAMONDS. Participating artists include Mei Kawajiri, Stuart Semple, Julia Heffernan, PJ Linden, Claire Luxton, Georgia Grey, Carly Jean Andrews, Ivan Alifan, Dave Pollot, Kendra Dandy, Damon Lucas, Bradley Theodore, Julia Rich, Ashley Longshore. The event is open to the public and will transform the lobby of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel into a hub for fashion and art.