Dima Rebus paints with ice that strangers send him from around the world. 

The process begins before he touches a brush. Contributors (or as Rebus calls them, “floaters”) across the globe collect water samples — from parks, alleyways, abandoned buildings — and mail them to his studio. Rebus freezes each sample with watercolour pigments, then lets it melt onto paper. The ice dictates the first layer: unpredictable blooms, mineral traces, the ghost of a place he’s never been. Others arrive carrying contamination, political residue, ecological unrest — water as document as much as material.

Only then does he enter the abstract field with figurative imagery, responding to what the water left behind.

Nearly every sample arrives with a letter. Place, mood, memory, time — the contributors become co-authors before Rebus makes a single mark.

Follow up artist Dima Rebus

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