INFINITE PORTRAITS
I explore the intersection of classical portraiture and digital materiality, reimagining the sacred tradition of gold-leafed religious icons through the lens of contemporary technology.
Using traditional oil painting techniques with digital tools—pen, large format tablet, and custom brushes—I approach the digital canvas as a single-layer medium. This time-consuming process deliberately counters today's AI-driven mass production, treating time itself as an offering that breathes soul into the artwork.
The pixelated, generative backgrounds serve as a modern interpretation of the divine light once represented by gold leaf in medieval and Renaissance sacred art. Each pixel becomes a quantum of digital luminescence, creating an ever-shifting tapestry that speaks to both the infinite and ephemeral nature of modern existence.
These portraits challenge our understanding of spirituality in the digital age, where code becomes the new gilding technique and computational randomness creates patterns stretching toward infinity. The glitch aesthetic, inspired by television interference patterns, suggests a form of digital transcendence where imperfection and corruption become pathways to the sublime.
FATY
ARTVERSE
SOLVM I - Solo Show, Paris, France
Digital painting, Generative Art
24 sec, loop
2025
"FATY" continues my research on hand painted portrait through digital materiality. The work bridges classical portraiture tradition with contemporary digital aesthetics, featuring a generative golden pixel background that both honours and disrupts the gilt surfaces of religious medieval paintings.
The subject's attire creates a temporal dialogue: Malick Sidibé's iconic boxing photograph on the t-shirt pays homage to West African photography's profound impact on portraiture, while the gummy bear pendant introduces pop culture's playful vernacular. This juxtaposition of historical reference and youth culture symbols reflects my constant exploring of our era's complex and multi-layered visual language.
The wooden frame, inscribed with Roman numerals, acts as a portal between physical and digital realms. The glitchy corruption of the animated painting reflect of the effect of time on digital art - a contemporary memento mori where data corruption becomes a metaphor for temporal impermanence. Each pixel serves as a building block of digital spirituality, suggesting how our identities now exist between tangible and virtual states.
By incorporating animation and glitch elements, the work examines how traditional portraiture evolves in an age of dynamic digital media. The infinite pixels research manifests as a meditation on time, memory, and the transformation of human representation in our increasingly digitised existence.