On May 24, 2022, artist David Dathuna died of lung cancer at the age of 48, and he once ate a banana installed by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan in his work "Comedians", which sold for $120,000 at Art Basel Miami.
Afterwards, David posted a video of himself eating bananas on his personal Instagram and wrote: "Hungry Artist – My Art Performance." I really liked the work of Mr. Maurizio Cattelan and I really liked the arrangement. And added, "It's very delicious." ”
Shortly after Basel 2019, Dathuna held a press conference in New York City to discuss the significance of his "act of performance."
Born in Georgia in 1974, David Datuna has been working in the United States since the late 1990s, actively incorporating modern technology into his work, and is one of Georgia's best-selling artists. Of banana eating behavior, he explains: "Any meaningful interaction with an object can turn it into art. I'm a hungry artist and I crave new interactions. The Berhauden Gallery eventually replaced the bananas consumed by Datuna, saying the value of the work was "ideas" rather than physical bananas.
David Dathuna
David Dathuna's art has been described as a "melting pot of visualizations," and he is fascinated by the historical figures who shape national identity and how they become symbols — whether positive or negative — and passed down from generation to generation, influencing our world.
Putin - Mona Lisa
Steve Jobs
In 2011, Datuna reconstructed Putin-Mona Lisa from a Mona Lisa portrait and sold it for $269,000 at the Moscow Art Fair, and he later sold "Steve Jobs" at THE SCOPE Miami Art Fair for $210,000, one of the most expensive works of art sold at the show that year. In his eyes, Steve Jobs was a truly visionary and a major force changing the way we look at and use technology. His insight into aesthetics influenced art and fashion on many levels. Lenses symbolically express an individual's identity, illusion, perception, fragmentation, and unity.
Rap tycoon Jay Z also became the subject of his creations, and David Datuna used a large number of old spectacle lenses to create large wall sculptures of Picasso: Opposition of Imaginations. The visual style of the work is strong, and the undulating lines of the glasses are concave and convex, so that the vision produces a stronger three-dimensional sense, so that the face presents an unprecedented three-dimensional feeling. David Datuna's installation art is currently the first person in the world to use glasses as installation art materials, full of forward-looking and ornamental, and also conveys the value of old glasses lenses that can be reused.
《Picasso:Opposition of Imaginations》
In January 2012, Datuna launched an installment called "Million Views: Israel Beyond Dreams" at the Million Views art project in Palm Beach, Florida. The artwork consists of a triptych of the Israeli flag assembled in the style of Datuna's cascading optical lenses, representing Israel's past, present and future.
Billions of perspectives
In 2013, Datuna exhibited "Billions of Perspectives," the first interactive work using Google Glass as a medium, at the Basel Fair. The work covers a 114-inch-long, 85-inch-wide American flag overlaid with numerous spectacle-like lenses, and four cameras operating on a Raspberry Pi microcomputer are embedded. When the viewer puts on Google Glass, the camera begins to take inductive shots. For years, Dathuna has been using optics as a medium in his art, both in "Million Views" and now in "Billion Views". The web of positive and negative footage expresses multiple perspectives shared by the masses from within.
Most of Datuna's artworks were created to view through optical lenses and symbolize different points of view. Others made political statements, with his art installation parked in front of Trump Tower. The art installation combines presidential candidate Trump's campaign slogan "Make America" with Hillary Clinton's campaign slogan "Stronger Together" as a metaphor for a divided country.
In 2015, filmmakers Michael Huter and Brian Bayerl produced a documentary about Datuna called Datuna: Portrait of America. The film tells the story of Dathuna fleeing repression in the former Soviet Union and pursuing her dream of cultural and artistic freedom in the United States. Filmmakers followed him in creating the first work of art that combined contemporary art with wearable technology — all the while battling a potentially deadly cancer diagnosis.
In 2021, Datuna launched a new project on philanthropy with Dole, an American fruit and vegetable production and marketing group, that aims to raise awareness of food insecurity and malnutrition while raising funds for the Boys and Girls Club of America. In his work, he still uses his signature spectacle lens technique, using the top layer of mosaic lenses to complete each painting. "Different lenses represent different perspectives and interpretations of society," he said. "The four individual fruits in the central section represent people coming together to tackle hunger."
On May 24, 2022, Datuna passed away at a clinic in Boston. His death was not widely reported, and his friend and colleague artist Natalia Kdiashvili announced the news on the social media platform Facebook: "My best friend David is no longer with me. ”