STAIRWAY TO NEVER

Below: Abstract Photo Collage Composition, 2018

Below: Abstract Vector Composition June 2021, based on elements in my painting STEALTH ( 2016 )

Below: Abstract Photo Collage Composition, 2018

EXPERIMENTAL COMPOSITION

HOMAGE TO JAPAN: SKY/EARTH/CLOUDS 

Abstract Vector Composition:

Real-world paint strokes digitized,

recoloured and recomposed.

NEW HIEROGLYPHS - EXPERIMENTAL WORK

Digital composition features a mix of geometric vector shapes overlaid with natural real-world paintbrush strokes, vectorised.

New Hieroglyphs, Vector drawing.

MOXY DOWNTOWN: ON THE UP

Very pleased that the super-funky designer hotel MOXY DOWNTOWN NYC - which features a series of my digital mosaic tiles in the lobby - has been nominated for the Condé Nast Reader's Choice Award. No doubt part of its amazing success is the contribution of interior designer Kim Edwards who infused the hotel with her playful, eclectic, and energetic sense of aesthetics. Well done, Kim!

Below: Datastream Arabesque #8 ( detail with texture )

About the Datastream Arabesques: Each composition is made of fragments of other compositions that were broken up, partially deleted and then recomposed. In other words, it was a digital version of smashing up a load of ceramics in order to create a mosaic from the fragments. The artwork evolved naturally into a series of Futuroid Arabic motifs, which I'm still experimenting with, but haven't released yet.

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COLONY COLLAPSE

Colony Collapse - Digital Drawing, April 2019.

MY ART IN MOXY DOWNTOWN HOTEL, NEW YORK

DATASTREAM ARABESQUES: ABSTRACT MOSAICS SHOWCASED

IN STYLISH NEW BOUTIQUE HOTEL, MANHATTAN

Above: Photo courtesy of Moxy Downtown.

In the summer of 2017, I was contacted by Kim Edwards, an art director at New York architects STONEHILL TAYLOR. She was interested in using my Polygraph Nudes artwork in a new hotel called MOXY DOWNTOWN, that was being built in Manhattan. For the next few months we went back and forth, but ultimately word came back from the owners that perhaps the art was tonally not in sync with the vibe of the hotel. We tried various tweaks, but the artwork was from a specific time ( they were produced purely during an experimental phase about six or seven years earlier ), and anything that came after it seemed to lack the same spirit. 

When I went to visit Kim in October of that year, I noticed that her design scrapbook included some of my experimental mosaic patterns lifted from this blog, alongside some jpegs of pixelly old-school 'space invader' characters that she'd sourced from elsewhere. Composed entirely of squares, the two different designs looked good together and this greatly excited me because it was an intriguing indication of the direction Kim was going in. ( Continued... )

Below: The DATASTREAM ARABESQUE artworks were also featured in the Birmingham Design Fest's 'Best of Birmingham' exhibition at Allemuir House, curated by Gensler Birmingham. 

It's an interesting process, going back and forth between drawings, paintings and digital. Ways of thinking that evolved uniquely to my painting method, found their way into my digital art process, and vice-versa, and I so was very pleased that these more contemporaneous works had caught Kim's eye.

Below: A visualisation by art director Kim Edwards. The MOXY brand of hotels is about creating a stylish environment for sophisticated millennials 'at affordable prices'. Kim's mood boards indicated to me that I should expect a Scandinavian / Japanese amalgam of natural stone and wood colours, interspersed with cool artworks from a wide range of artists, myself included.

Originally, the process of creating the mosaic designs involved editing, revising and re-composing until each piece balanced correctly - exactly the same method as my paintings. The only difference is that with digital, you can produce dozens of permutations in the same amount of time that it would take to do one painting. 

Below: DATASTREAM ARABESQUES at MOXY DOWNTOWN by Alexi K, photo courtesy of Kim Edwards.

Entitled DATASTREAM ARABESQUES, the artwork was intended to evoke the flow of  information through the matrix of technology that now envelopes our lives. 

Below: DATASTREAM ARABESQUES at MOXY DOWNTOWN by Alexi K, photo courtesy of Kim Edwards.

What's particularly satisfying is that despite the technology and output methods that characterize digital art, its creation was, for me, a completely authentic process of inspiration and abstraction, which luckily received no notes or requests for tweaks from the owners of the hotel. The designs stayed exactly how I had originally made them, before I had even thought about any possible commercial application. I look forward to staying at MOXY DOWNTOWN later this year and seeing the finished project for myself.

Thanks to Kim Edwards and Stonehill Taylor, and also to MOXY HOTELS.

DATASTREAM ARABESQUE #01

Digital design inspired by Islamic art, currently featured in the Best of Birmingham, in the Jewellery Quarter.

VECTORS: ARTWORK RECONFIGURED

INSTAGRAM PROMO SAMPLERS START THIS WEEK!

Above: Sample of digital art based on my 'Brazil Mood Painting' ( 2011 ).

I've started an Instagram poster series, highlighting my abstract art. Over time, my paintings developed their own geometric language and style. It's proved very popular, especially with architecture and design companies in the US, so that's why I'm translating many of my compositions into a purely digital form, allowing them to be produced seamlessly, at a large scale, in different configurations on a variety of materials. 

( Scroll down for the link. ) 

Below: Sample of digital art based on my 'Stealth' painting ( 2015 ).

Below: Sample of digital art based on my 'Athini' painting ( 2011 ).

Click here for my Instagram page!

HIDDEN MESSAGES

Experimental Digital Composition, 01 / 02 / 2018

2017 ANNUAL REPORT / 2nd QUARTER REVIEW

APRIL 2017: SPLITTING INFINITIES [ THE ABSTRACTION OF MODERN TRAVEL ]

- Continuing my Abstract Life series of articles and pictorials -

Click here for the full article.

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MAY - JUNE 2017

CARBON BLACK: Acrylic on Canvas, 50cm x 50cm

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U.S. AIN'T: Further experiments with Digital / Vector Art

UNTITLED COMPOSITION 14 / 12 / 2017

Abstract / 2D Vector Drawing / + Texture

[ CRACKED ] ENCRYPTION

Even though my paintings look very structured, they still evolve out of a spontaneous process, which is why they sometimes take so long. I start with an empty grid and fill it in. The shapes have to balance ( in 2D as well as the 3D surface layers ), as do the colours. At the same time, the whole thing has to conform to my need for asymmetry. So the editing process involves re-taping, repainting, remixing, over-writing and deleting as I go along.

The net result is a composition that still has to balance, despite all the random elements that went into it. Example: ENCRYPTION ( below ), acrylic on canvas, 2016.

However, having spent most of 2017 experimenting with vector art, I've used what I've learnt to convert some of my paintings into digital replicas, that can be broken up and reorganised. Here are some of the component parts. There's no composition here - I was simply separating parts out on the page to see what I could use. 

Below: ENCRYPTION ( SHAPES ) digital drawing, Sept 2017.

SAMPLER

Busy experimenting with shapes and colours. I'll post some examples as soon as I feel like I'm getting somewhere.

LET'S TWIST

It's not necessarily making 'picturesque' geometric patterns that interests me. It's pushing the software again and again, repeating the same manoeuvre on the computer, and then seeing what the ragged edges look like. It's these 'edgelands' that interest me the most.

Below: Let's Twist / Digital Vector Drawing

Below: Unretouched photograph of office block next to Snow Hill Station, Birmingham.

Below: Same photo glitched in Wordpad

GRAPH-PAPER EXPERIMENT #1

Digital Drawing w/ texture.

[DIGITAL] ENCRYPTION

SPR/H/WY / RMX / 5

SUPERHIGHWAY 2017 REMIXES

New digital variations based on my 2014 painting.

ALL ART ON THIS BLOG, UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED, IS PROPERTY OF ALEXI K.

HOMMAGE À PICASSO ET BRAQUE AVEC CHEVRONS

I was going to leave this off the blog, but having looked at it again, I've decided I really like it. It's a structure that I can only see in my mind's eye: The repeated towns and villages as depicted by Picasso and Braque, which I saw at the fantastic PIONEERING CUBISM exhibition, circa 1990, in NYC at the MOMA. This is my version... made with chevrons.

EXPERIMENTAL WORK #3

Still exploring vector drawing, creating random shapes and then stretching and distorting them. Decided to take this one apart, and then stopped when it suddenly began to resemble a 1980s album cover. 

Below: 80s Album Cover,  2D Digital Line Drawing.

In the second piece I'm beginning to explore the perrception of depth within the 2D shapes.

Below: 80s Album Cover Remixed,  2D Digital Line Drawing.

In the third, all colours have been removed to expose the actual lines that make up that version of picture.

Below: 80s Album Cover Remixed 2,  2D Digital Line Drawing.