What novel ways can digital artists explore the human mystery called ‘love’? For photoshop connoisseur Antoine Paikert, also known under the moniker Esquive Studio, a unique blend of color solarization seems key. The French born, Helsinki based designer mixes a combination of different media with a strong focus on human connections, evidenced by the highlighted work titled ‘And one day, we met’. The placement of these poetic texts become part of his artworks, almost stylizing them as fluorescently tinted, subtly grained vintage posters. The focal point of this piece is the sensual intersection of its two androgynous protagonists. Their literal overlap portrays a romantic ideal, mimicking Plato’s interpretation of two split halves of a soul re-uniting. Isn’t this after all something a lot of us so desperately seek, a bond that surpasses the purely physical and skin deep, something the x-ray feel of the work only seems to underline.
Antoine’s pieces create a transcendental and somewhat hallucinatory feel, where personal feelings are graphically translated and dissected. The often-illusive romantic ideal of love has inspired artists throughout the centuries and it’s intriguing to find how digital artists like Paikert keep resurrecting this utopic desire in novel ways. The question of course, as often the case, remains if once such a bond is formed, will the moment of true connection be destined to only remain fleeting? Or, unlike the temporal Romeo and Juliets of the world, can two people finally crack that eternal human enigma and make it last? Perhaps, like all dreams, it will forever be just outside our grasps, but that doesn’t mean we have to stop trying.
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