DeeKay (South Korean, b. 1989), the artist name of DeeKay Kwon, is a digital artist based in San Francisco known for animations inspired by retro video games like Super Mario.,He spent a decade as a motion designer at Google and Apple before announcing in 2021 that he would make art full-time.He has described his guiding philosophy simply as “Art is for everyone”.
In April 2022 his work Life and Death sold for $1,000,000 to the collector Cozomo de' Medici, setting a new record for his work.In 2023 he released his first 24-hour open edition, New Era ETH, again with Cozomo de' Medici, on Coinbase's Base network. Despite social platforms censoring links to the drop, more than 45,000 copies were minted. Paired with a companion piece on Bitcoin, New Era BTC, the two form the New Era Set, described as a celebration of a future in which crypto is currency and art is digital.
In May 2024 a work by DeeKay was the only digital artwork included in Christie's post-war contemporary art day sale in Hong Kong.Later that year he took part in the group exhibition “BusanMoCA Platform” at the Busan Museum of Contemporary Art, alongside artists including Mario Klingemann and Bill Viola.
For Art Basel Hong Kong's 2026 edition, he showed video-game-inspired animations in the fair's Zero 10 digital art sector.,As part of a parallel city collaboration, “Digital Art @Central”, his animation of 100 characters representing Hong Kong residents was projected nightly onto the facade of the Hong Kong Club through 29 March. He said he wanted the piece to reflect the city “as a living, moving place shaped by its people, its rhythm, and its cultural vibrancy”.
