David Hockney: Bigger & Closer
New tools in Hockney’s iPad app for the work he made for Lightroom’s opening show
Client: David Hockney and Studio
Looking for the app? It was made for one artist and isn't publicly available. We do hear from people looking for it – if that's you, tell us.
Show: David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away), created with 59 for Lightroom
Opened: 22 February 2023, Lightroom, King’s Cross, London – touring since
In short
Bigger & Closer opened Lightroom, a four-storey projection space in King’s Cross, and has toured ever since. Hockney made new pieces for it in Hockney Brushes, the iPad app we built for him, and among the show’s best-loved moments are his paintings drawing themselves, stroke by stroke, across the walls. We added two things to the app for the show: a “grid composition” view for making much bigger, multi-part pictures, and very high-resolution video export of each painting being made.
Hockney’s iPad paintings in Bigger & Closer, and the artist in the room. © David Hockney. Footage: Lightroom / Carriageworks.
The show
The show’s title lettering, drawn by Hockney himself in Hockney Brushes. © David Hockney.
A 50-minute show in six chapters, narrated by Hockney himself, with a new score by Nico Muhly. It was written and directed by Mark Grimmer and made by the team at 59, working closely with the artist over three years. It moves through his whole career – perspective, “drawing with a camera”, the Polaroid collages and swimming pools, the Grand Canyon – and the joy of spring on his iPad.
What the show needed
Hockney’s iPad paintings are made on a screen a foot wide. Lightroom’s walls are four storeys high. The show wanted them at room scale – not as still images, but drawing themselves, stroke by stroke, the way they were made. Some pieces were built from several paintings side by side, and each wall needed its own sharp, correctly sized video.
One of Hockney’s iPad paintings filling the room at Lightroom, London. © David Hockney. Photography: Justin Sutcliffe.
“You can watch the whole drawing being made. It plays back every mark you did. It’s like looking over someone’s shoulder to see them draw, and people always love doing that with an artist, don’t they?”
– David Hockney, on Bigger & Closer, February 2023
What it took
Hockney made several pieces especially for the show, all of them in Hockney Brushes, the app we built for him in 2018. Two new features were added for it. A “grid composition” view let him make a much bigger, multi-part picture as a single piece – several of the show’s new works were made with it. And a new export produced very high-resolution video of each painting being made, redrawn from a blank canvas brush stroke by brush stroke, as if he were painting it live, at a size that holds up across a four-storey wall.
Both rest on the way the app has worked from the start: it stores every stroke rather than pixels, so a painting can be drawn again at any size, and replayed mark by mark, without losing anything.
The same tooling went on to put Bigger Christmas Trees across the face of Battersea Power Station and into David Hockney 25 at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in 2025.
An iPad painting wrapping the room at Lightroom, February 2023. © David Hockney. Photography: Justin Sutcliffe.
Where it has been shown
- Lightroom, King's Cross, London – 2023, 2024, 2025
- Lightroom Seoul – 2023–24
- Aviva Studios, Manchester – 2024–25, 2025–26
- Ulsan – 2025
- Shanghai – 2025
- Aranya – 2025–26
- Gardens by the Bay, Singapore – 2026
- BASE Digital Art Center, Shenzhen – 25 September 2026 – 30 May 2027
- Carriageworks, Sydney – 22 October 2026 – 7 February 2027
The Guardian’s photo essay on the opening gives a good sense of the room. Full creative credits are on 59’s project page.
Photography: header image and room photographs by Justin Sutcliffe, © David Hockney. Artwork rights: David Hockney artworks shown for documentation of Reflex Arc’s project history only, © David Hockney / the David Hockney Foundation. No licensing available via Reflex Arc.
Interested in the app?
Hockney Brushes was built for one artist, to his specifications, and it isn't publicly available. A lot of people arrive here looking for it, and we'd like to know how many. There's nothing to announce - but if you'd like to hear should that ever change, leave your email. And if you've a question about the app, or about the paintings, ask it here – we'll answer if we can. We'll use your address for nothing else.
The full story of the app, and everywhere the work made with it has been shown: The iPad painting app we built for David Hockney.
