Brendan Dawe’s The Pandora Variations presents generative work with original music and choreography in five distinct yet connected parts; Hatred, Jealousy, Turmoil, Sickness and Hope. Previews of Turmoil and Jealousy are displayed on this Sotheby’s lot page. The remaining three pieces will be displayed shortly.

Brendan Dawes uses cutting-edge generative methods and data to visualise forms of everyday life that he transforms into complex mathematical configurations. The innovative UK based artist draws much of his inspiration from popular culture and nature, often revolving his work around the concept of time and memory. These analytical explorations into our relationship with time and space have been an ongoing theme in Dawes’s work as he continues to question our understanding of the surrounding world. In 2004 Dawes created Cinema Redux, offering a pioneering new way to view the aesthetics of a film in a single visual distillation. The work is now part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. His work has been displayed in some of the world’s prestigious exhibition spaces including Big Bang Data spanning thirteen cities, as well as three MoMA shows in New York. Dawes is also a Lumen Price and Aesthetica Art Prize alumnus. More recently, his visionary series The Art of Cybersecurity was featured in Art Futura 2020.

One of the world’s leading experts in Houdini, Dawes is both a craftsman and artist. He stands as an exemplar of a groundbreaking digital creative who has only started to find engagement commercially for his original works of art. NFTs have offered him the ability to entirely focus on his creative practice for its own sake - and the results are stunning. The medium of NFTs offers him “a completely modern ecosystem which provides a rich canvas on to which make new and exciting work, with a direct, close relationship with collectors.” The artist debuted his inaugural series of NFTs on Nifty Gateway in November 2020, the selection of works titled The Waves, sold out in only twenty seconds. Digitally native collectors deeply understand the craft and skill that goes into Dawes’s generative creations, the wider world is just starting to wake up.

The Pandora Variations are Dawes’s most recent works to question the interpretation of our existence. The series takes inspiration from the Greek mythological tale of Pandora, with each work representing one of five distinct, though connected parts: Hatred, Jealousy, Turmoil, Sickness and Hope. Such a story holds great pertinence to the events of the last year, which caused pain and loss to many. Dawes, therefore, set out to create a body of work that not only acknowledges this suffering, but also embodies the importance of optimism. One must remember that “after all the evils of the world were released from Pandora’s jar, hope remained.” As a result, the thought-provoking series aptly demonstrates how Dawes questions our perceptions of memory and time through the lens of popular culture, while maintaining that optimism in the time of adversity.

For the project, Dawes worked with two prodigious collaborators. The first, Logan Nelson, scored the original music for the series. In 2018, the “must watch composer”, as endorsed by Oscar-winning director Barry Jenkins, was named Best Young International Composer at the World Soundtrack Awards in Ghent, Belgium. Dawes also worked with choreographer, actor, and filmmaker Charlotte Edmonds on The Pandora Variations. She acted as both choreographer and dance performer in these works. Edmonds, who made her choreographic debut at The Royal Ballet when she was 16, has worked on a broad variety of shows gaining international recognition.

All copyright is held with the three collaborators – Brendan Dawes, Logan Nelson and Charlotte Edmonds