Dirk Hardy

Dirk Hardy (1989, NL) is interested in the relationship people enter into with their environment and with each other. With Vivarium, an ongoing project that took-off in 2018, Hardy constructs hyperrealistic "purposeful fiction": contemporary worlds that express the complexity of our zeitgeist.

With his tableaus Hardy welcomes the viewer to a multitude of worlds. In his creative process he draws from a web of observations, memories and imagination, and responds to both large and small events in the world. He explores the complexity of life in an idiosyncratic and compassionate way and in doing so, aims to increase our social sensitivity.

Hardy studied Architecture at Eindhoven University of Technology and afterwards Photography at the Willem de Kooning Academy. He is nominated for the Aesthetica Art Prize 2021 (UK), and launches Vivarium in the accompanying exhibition. His first solo is planned for the end of 2021 in museum MOYA (NL). In 2019 he showed his work for the first time on an international stage during Photo Basel.