Today we’d like to introduce you to Dekker Dreyer.
Hi Dekker, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
As a child, I lived in a lot of different parts of the US. I lived in NYC, Cape Cod, close to here in Ventura, Florida… my parents even had this traveling puppet show when I was very small and we operated out of a van doing tours with it. My father spent most of his life as a painter, but when we lived in New York he designed t-shirts and did animation. My mother was creative in her own ways, making stained glass and pottery. I was always encouraged in my creativity, but I was also trying to please people and make things that I thought might be more mainstream.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I had to deprogram myself from wanting to create things I thought might please some imaginary audience. I had to disengage from that idea to find happiness in my work.
For example, it’s been difficult to reconcile my love of horror movies and underground comic books, especially European sci-fi, with my desire to create art in non-traditional formats. I’m always chasing something new… some different way to create. I’ve been really driving this on my own terms and it’s taken a long time for my audience and I to start coming together.
Neil Gaiman once told me, “I’m not sure that mainstream success is worth striving for, because I don’t think it means anything. If you find your audience they take care of you. And they grow. The main thing is to communicate with them…”
He was very right, for example, I recently created a TikTok account http://tiktok.com/@phantomastronaut where, if you have the app, you can see that I’m telling these Twilight Zone, Philip K. Dick style short stories in a slideshow format with AI-generated artwork and in the last two or three weeks since I launched the project I’ve had millions of views. That, to me, is incredible because TikTok isn’t the kind of platform you usually think about when you think about fine art and narrative storytelling… but it’s working and it’s because I trust in the work and the audience, even when there doesn’t seem like there’s a place where those two forces of nature can meet.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I take a lot of how I produce my work from people like Dali and Warhol. That doesn’t mean my work is inspired by them, but it means that I come from a place where the intent transcends the medium. We live in a time when artists feel like they need to silo themselves into a specific kind of craft, and to me it’s important to have an artistic throughline, but it’s not so important how the ideas I’m putting forward manifest. All of my work as Phantom Astronaut revolves around social / cultural commentary, folklore, and the subconscious… the inner dream-space. All of these themes recur in films, VR interactive work, immersive installations, music albums, and whatever else I create. It’s always a little futuristic and a little visceral… the monsters I like to create are usually institutions like global supply chains and marketing firms and the healthcare industry… but I show them in a way that makes them into these tangible, surreal, horrors. It’s important to me that we transmute these scary concepts into something we more immediate… like effigies…
For example, I released an album last year called “Forbidden Science of the Western States” and every track was built from samples I recorded in places where military science in the US lead to misery. Nuclear weapons, civilian disease testing all real things that were done in California and surrounding states.
Another example is a recent gallery show I did. I get a lot of threats on social media because of my progressive political positions and I recently made some work about it at a Summer Solstice event at a space in Downtown LA called Seker Factory. My pieces were humanoid sculptures made to look as if they were growing from moss and tree bark, but their faces were interactive LED screens which displayed the social media profile pictures of people who’d sent me the worst threats. A lot of people are in the same position and these hundreds and thousands of angry people don’t seem real, but when I made them into this creatures that were both natural and digital and unsettling I think the people who visited the show came away with an unsettled, empathic, feeling they wouldn’t have gotten from hearing about experiences like mine.
Alright so before we go can you talk to us a bit about how people can work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
I’ve had a hard time collaborating with people. I have a small group of people who are on the same wavelength, but I love meeting and talking to people who are inspired by my projects. My website http://www.phantomastronaut.com has all of the ways to connect to me. I love hearing from people.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.phantomastronaut.com
- Instagram: http://instagram.com/dekkerdreyer
- Facebook: http://facebook.com/dekkerdreyerofficial
- Youtube: http://youtube.com/c/phantomastronaut
- Other: http://tiktok.com/@phantomastronaut
Image Credits
Photo Credits for the sculptures in the gallery space James St. Vincent
