If you could travel anywhere in the world where would you go? Why this location?
Svalbard Global Seed Vault – I’m utterly fascinated by this place, which is essentially a ‘backup’ for the worlds seed storage, held in a giant vault literally carved into a mountain and sealed by the permafrost. I made a large art project in response to this place in 2017 but never had the opportunity to visit. I recently learned that the next door neighbour is Githubs Open source code repository. There is something deeply compelling about seed and code buried underground for our future-selves to reuse in case some disaster wipes out all the other known safestores.
What are your other passions besides art? Why?
I’m somewhat obsessed with my dog! But also I’m a keen climber; I just love the fact that its both a physical and mental puzzle. You find yourself in all these weird situations and it seems almost impossible to move forward on the rock – until you subtly shift the weight over to a different part of your foot, or change your grip slightly and it unlocks the next move. When I’m climbing I have a deep understanding of my body that I’m simply unaware of at other times.
Do you make other forms of art?
Yep- as I said at the start, I have a background in sculpture, and I still make small castings in silicone and rubber when I want to do some specifically physical. I’m currently looking to incorporate 3-d printing into this.
How did you come up with your specific style?
It’s taken a long time – my nanna (mentioned above) was dutch, and I was exposed to a lot of the still life tradition as a child, so I love moodily lit interior pieces, or scenes with a lot of detail and chaos. But I also love works that have an allegorical aspect. In my works, everything symbolises something specific.
Anyone who looks at my work will also notice that lab-grown meat features heavily in my work. This comes from a long-term research project about the future of foodstuffs, and how the technology we use can actually shed a light on who we are as humans. – what we fear, what we hope for, what we seek to protect but also what we consider to be the resources at our disposal?
How has your style evolved over the years?
Thats quite a hard one to describe. Evidently I’ve moved from sculpture and large-scale installations into digital, but the works still carry the same sense of character.
Within the digital discipline, I’ve definitely become more interested in building up little details, and I’ve been working hard on my lighting. I suppose the work has become more cinematic in recent months and contain oblique story-telling clues and hints.
What is coming in the near future?
In the near future I have a big group drop with BLOOM on a big platform. BLOOM is a great cohort of absolutely incredible artists who formed simply because we all love eachothers work and want to stand for and encourage the best possible quality in the NFT space.
I am also bringing my Ghosts in the Carnery series to a close. This is a set of works on SuperRare that takes the form of an investigation or detective story, with each artwork being a new piece of evidence, and each previous piece of artwork containing clues about the next one to be minted.
The final piece of evidence in the story has been minted, and is an artwork that medidates on the interaction between humans and technology and where the borderline between our bodies and machinery becomes blurred.
It also contains some well-hidden clues which is open to anyone to discover, so I’d encourage you all to take a look.
What was your greatest failure and what did you learn from that?
Within art?…that’s a hard question. Honestly, the mistakes have always been when I haven’t trusted my gut. I tend to do a lot of research before making moves, but sometimes there have been things that juts feel right – I’ve been to scared or hesitant to fully trust that and have missed an opportunity in the process.
It’s a lesson that I need to keep learning and relearning.
If you could collaborate with one artist who would it be?
Probably Frederik Heyman, if only to get a better understanding of their incredible workflow
Do you have any upcoming drops?
Not any that have firm dates, but the BLOOM drop should have some info to share very soon
Where can collectors find your work?
https://superrare.com/davidlisser
https://foundation.app/@davidlisser
https://opensea.io/collection/carnables
Link to Website: www.davidlisser.co.uk
Social links:
www.twitter.com/davidlisser
www.instagram.com/davidlisser