Dima Rebus lives and works in London. His practice spans painting, installation, and sculpture, focusing on material transformation and systems of connection formed through water, place, and human exchange.
Known for large-scale watercolor works on paper, Rebus uses custom chemical solutions and water collected around the world. His archive includes rainwater, river water, seawater, melted snow, glacial water, and other samples, each documented by place, date, origin, and pH level. The water is gathered by the artist, friends, family, and strangers — people he calls “floaters” — who become indirect co-authors. This network was central to his 2025 solo exhibition Floaters at Frieze No.9 Cork Street, London.
His process balances control and chance. Each sample is tested and filtered before being used with pigments. In many works, water is frozen with watercolor and left to melt on paper, where pigments separate and form organic structures that merge with figurative imagery. Variations in mineral content and pH shape this process, allowing the conditions of each environment to enter the image.
Rebus’s works often exist between figuration and abstraction, document and fiction. They trace how everyday environments change over time: each repeated sample can record a shift in place, weather, routine, or circumstance. In this sense, the works follow the slow evolution of the everyday — how private lives, routes, and surroundings leave material traces.