Dalek

Artist and designer James Marshall aka DALEK is originally from Raleigh, North Carolina, his artwork has appeared on a wide variety of mediums, including sneakers, sculptures and a Scion car. He made his mark in the art world with his iconic Space Monkey character, which looks like a catatonic, twisted mouse. “The Space Monkey is my concept of a human being,” he says. “It’s a tool for relaying and exploring ideas,” and with it he merged street art, cartoons, Japanese pop art and the energy of the punk scene, which he associated himself with. A major turning point in Dalek’s studio practice was working as Takashi Murakami’s assistant in 2001. Rendered in a minimalist, flat style, Dalek used the Space Monkey like an alter ego, a visual manifestation of his feelings, as well as his love for the absurdity of human interactions.

His new body of work revels in a profusion and hyper-abundance of color and planes of space: the familiar lines and iconic Space Monkey that defined his earlier work are only a starting point for a new series of meditations on the push and pull of forces he sees in contemporary life. "It's an ever-expanding, contracting barely breathing universe, contemplating suffocation while simultaneously hovering over the consequences of not exploring further the options that no longer lay waiting in the back of the coat room."