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Something I often find inspiring within the art world, is when creative voices can infuse their commissioned work with the same unique extravagance that became the trademark of their personal projects. A perfect example can be found in the portfolio of mixed media virtuoso Frederik Heyman, who at times lends his unique voice to juggernauts in the field of fashion and music. Featured here is a hypnotic mix of portraiture and digital installation the Belgian conceptualised for the trendsetting ‘Dust Magazine’ in their lucky thirteenth issue titled ‘We have no fathers’. Set in carefully staged digitised decors, Heyman converts inspirations from film and fine art into detailed slices of time. The actors in these ‘passion plays’ are on this occasion the ‘crème de la crème’ of Belgian creativity, from visual (Rinus van de Velde) to performance artists (Billy Bultheel). Every detail matters in these photogrammetried scenes, not in the least the carefully chosen outfits, provided by leading designers like Dries Van Noten. The interplay of the temporal within these installations is fascinating. While we find the protagonist’s life on pause (save perhaps a smouldering cigarette), the camera provides a sense of movement, at times quite literal when we witness it capturing the scene in the Billy Bultheel section. Accompanied by Roman Hiele’s soundscapes, we’re transported from one piece to the next, entering Pasolini’s ‘Salo’ before moving on to the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, which in its turn takes us to ‘the death of Marat’. All clever winks to iconic art moments, re-interpreted and re-mixed. Watching them, I loved peeling back the different layers and messages contained within, sometimes scribbled on fake mirrors or running through red tinted teleprompters. “And I know in the end I will try to remember what it was to be me” becomes an all to fitting phrase when the fragmented segments of these 3D-scanned personalities are confronted with each other. The visual stunning portraits feel above all like an exploration, into the psyche of its subjects but perhaps even more into the inner world of its creator. Frederik Heyman Website Twitter Instagram The series Dust #13 - We Have No Fathers Video Excerpts Inge Grognard and Ronald Stoops Billy Bultheel Glenn Martens

In an era where artificial intelligence is starting to help realise the wildest imagery, the work of one of its trailblazers helps us focus on its power to communicate a certain transcendental human feeling. With the aid of a proprietary enhanced version of Google’s ‘DeepDream’, digital art pioneer Daniel Ambrosi bends and blends a whopping 84 high resolution photographs together, all taken of the Kolob Canyon in Utah’s Zion national park. At its core it feels like this vibrant ‘Double Arch Alcove dreamscape' hopes to convey an almost out of body experience, sharing a sort of simulation of what the unique fireworks of internal neurons within the artist’s brain forged when confronted with the heart stopping aesthetic wonders that mother nature provided. Within a career spanning more than four decades, this piece so far is the only one where its creator used three distinct hallucinatory passes at three different scales, yielding a truly satisfactory result. Seemingly embracing its own version of machine-driven post-impressionism, the exuberant hues and tints of the composition imbue the tableau with a continual sense of motion. It’s artificial enhancements somehow seem to solidify the vivacity of its subject matter while at the same time abstracting it, a tender balance that shows the difficulty of incorporating separate effects into one image. Staring at the surreal scenery I discovered the shape of an immense, imagined eye, it's pupil looking somehow both inward and outward, to the future and the past. What I really enjoy about Daniel’s alternate panoramas is how they makes us question the fundamentally experiential nature of reality. It feels crucial that we as thinking beings explore different ways of seeing what’s in front of us and somehow finding ways of sharing those sensory observations with others. For isn’t art a lot of about sharing an internal experience externally? And regardless the technology, work like this even more underlines that we need human voices like Daniel’s, with his continued sense of wonder and eagerness to experiment, to be our guide in exploring these enhanced frames and giving soul to captured pixels. Daniel Ambrosi Website Twitter Instagram The Work Double Arch Alcove "Three-Pass" Dreamscape

What happens when an artist interprets the concept of ‘body building’ in a uniquely poetic way? The result can be found in Carl Warner’s intriguing series of photo enhancements named Bodyscapes. Globally renowned as a food artist, Warner here turns his distinctive talents for re-creating scenery from cauliflower to muscle mass. With shrewd titles like Elbow Point and Desert of Sleeping Men, the works depict multiple angles of the same model’s anatomy, imaginatively compositing fleshy curves into illusory geography. The process requires both sketched preparation and quick improvisation, as the actual shooting with a model always leads the artist to discover compelling new shapes. I really enjoyed how the images were able to desexualise the human physique and put a novel reversal on our tendency to anthropomorphise our environment. It’s also remarkable how a collective and commercial obsession with the perfect body loses some of its destructive power when we’re shown limbs and ligaments in such a deconstructed way. I hope in future entries Carl can push things even further and explore the abstract beauty of our flaws. For when birthmarks can be meadows and pimples abstract rock formations, can there then be a new light shed on those perfect imperfections? Something to ponder as I’ll leave you with the artist’s own wise words on the series:"I see the body as a vehicle that is gradually worn down by age, carrying the scars of our journey through this life like a map. Whether they are looked after, abused, adored, drawn on, pampered or poisoned, they are often a record of how we have lived, and therefore offer an alternate form of portraiture. The external view of ourselves in this way becomes a more abstract and intimate reflection of ourselves, and when given a sense of place, it plays on the idea of the inner space in which we dwell". Carl Warner https://twitter.com/CarlWarner1 https://www.instagram.com/carlwarnerofficial/

As past Wednesday we celebrated international women’s day, work from artists like Aman Rasouli help us realise that there’s still a long road ahead towards worldwide equality. The Afghan photographer and documentary maker, who fled her native land when the Taliban regime rose back to power, expresses through emotional imagery her view on the suppressive regimes she’s been confronted with throughout her life. I was particularly struck by the series featured here, named Where is my face?, which tackles Aman’s complicated relationship with one of the most visible symbols of fundamentalist religious practice in Afghanistan, the Burqa. In three animated photographs, accompanied by the hauntingly sparse tones of Yusof Javadi’s music, we witness our heroine’s tragic journey. "How does it feel to not be blind but live like the blind?" we are asked in the text accompanying the works, as a water-drenched unveiling shows us the nearly broken spirit of Rasouli’s model, her sibling Faeze. Surrounded by floating flowers, we’re reminded of a Middle Eastern Ophelia, who seems fated to only find her long for liberty by taking her breath away. This desperate triptych does offer us hope, as the artist assures us that one day, we will see her rise again on behalf of all Afghan women. The bright illumination of the frames contrasts the profound sadness of the pieces and the striking gaze of Faeze in the second work is nothing short of heartbreaking. The subtle animations of the water give the pieces a more three-dimensional feel and help make the confessionals feel even more intimate. I found it important to share Aman’s work with you as it offers a unique view of how it feels to grow up as a woman in a harsh religious dictatorship. Sadly, having escaped one tyranny, the artist now faces more of the same in her new home of Iran. But hopefully, the slow revolution that started there can still blossom and provide us with a world where women can make their own choices in life without being suppressed or bullied into what others think they should do. Aman Rasouli https://twitter.com/AmanRasouli_ Yusof Javadi https://twitter.com/Yusof_javadi The works Where Is My Face #1 Where Is My Face #2 Where Is My Face #3

Will our continued reliance on rapidly growing machine intelligence reshape future human creativity in its own image? With his animated painting Ludica Futura, digital artist Vittorio Bonapace offers us a glimpse of what such a "bright potential future" might look like. With a generous dose of humor, the artist often manages to marry a love for classic fine art composition with very topical science fiction ideas. Here he takes us on a journey to a classroom in the blessed year of 2090, where we can quickly decipher a robotically sculpted re-interpretation of Caravaggio’s iconic David with the Head of Goliath as a central focal point. A divine switch is thrown and a flickering electric sun throws its dusty beam on our main decor. The gentle timbre of philosopher Alan Watt’s voice’s fills our ears and instructs us on the (coming) superiority of artificial intelligence. A dunce cap wearing pupil clearly hasn’t understood said lesson, but with the promise of "I’ll be good" he can now repent as his mechanised instructor points out the error of his perhaps too human ways. His classmates are clearly more eager to join the (r)evolution, although as the artist cleverly points out with his off and on use of illustrative illumination, the electronic anklets they all wear might point to a potentially less than utopian society. The beguiling combination of 3D and 2D that has become Vittorio’s trademark also receives some artificial enhancement, as very fittingly all the works featured on the back wall were made using AI tools. I really enjoyed Bonapace’s clever take on a very actual debate, where we are becoming masters in teaching machines to create like us, but perhaps might face a reversal of fortune as the independence of our mechanical partners grows. Will machines really see the world like us or will we start seeing the world like machines? With artists like Vittorio around, we can certainly look forward to being mesmerised by more fascinating interpretations of these dilemmas as that eternal clock ticks us forward towards the fated 18th of December 2090. I hope some of you might still be around to see if this vision then becomes reality. Vittorio Bonapace https://www.vittoriobonapace.com/

Web3 encourages us to think outside the box and explore the possibilities of the digital world. In this ecosystem, new possibilities are endless and the potential for creativity, learning, and experimentation is exciting. Since 2019, MoCDA has been among the frontrunners pushing for new collaborations and exciting projects that connect creatives from diverse backgrounds. We believe in the potential of innovation and synergies. It is with this premise that we are thrilled to announce our collaboration with Parcel Party on a project that highlights the hybrid opportunities offered by contemporary digital creativity. South African designer Skny Lou crafted three unique wearables inspired by the works by Giuseppe Lo Schiavo, Renderfruit and Thato Tatai joining our Permanent Collection this month. The wearables will be presented at NFT Paris alongside the works that inspired them and will be available to be collected on the Decentraland Marketplace very soon. We are also excited to have a special interview with Skny Lou to learn more about the scope of the project to be streamed on YouTube on Wednesday 22th February at 19:00 UTC. This is a unique opportunity to gain insight into the details of the collaboration and how the final designs have been crafted in collaboration with MoCDA. We look forward to celebrating digital creativity with you at NFT Paris on 24-25 February. Stay tuned for more updates and announcements from our team!

Do you often find yourself feeling nostalgic for a past that never existed? Then you might find a kindred spirit in French mixed media craftsman Matthieu Bourel. With a wink to the post WW1 dada movement, the expert collage artist coined the term ‘Dataism’ to describe his artistic process. Like the greatest of his cut and paste contemporaries, Matthieu dives headfirst into our collective photographic graveyard in search of new or perhaps hidden meaning to lost imagery. The result is a surreal, often hypnotic experience, whereby the repeated animation or alteration of human bodies and faces becomes key. Tapping into a collective dream state, the strange juxtaposition of familiar elements feels somehow both universal and deeply introspective. Take his work, ‘An Eye for an eye’, where a gigantic moist eyeball supplants the head of a black and white portrait. Within its gaze, firmly stuck on the past, we discover only ruin. I find Bourel’s oeuvre in many ways an ironic study of the passage of time, an exploration of our obsessive fixation on capturing and reproducing moments that are lost to us. Its characters to me feel often lost or stuck in a state of mind that the artist manages to externalize by his imaginative process. In ‘Emancipation’ we find a young boy seemingly ‘liberated’ from the prison of the family unit. As we sever the ties with our youth and explores an own identity, will we also lose that emotional connection with our slowly fading past? And will the person we then become be better for it or be forever haunted by the mirage of how things used to be? Does the artfully manipulated reality of ‘Fakenews’ threaten to numb our senses to a point where we lose our ability to tell fact from fiction, lie from truth? The answer, as always, lies within us to discover, but thankfully artists like Bourel push us to ask the question. My conclusion is simple, for those craving food for thought, have a taste of Matthieu’s body of work, I doubt it will leave you hungry. Matthieu Bourel https://dojo.electrickettle.fr/

Have the heirs to Egypt’s treasured past, widely considered the cradle of civilisation, also embraced the future? If you’ve used the 2017 version of Adobe’s groundbreaking ‘Photoshop’ software, you may already know the answer. Honoured by being featured on its splash screen, Amr Elshamy’s image manipulation ‘Falling’ could then be discovered by the rest of the world. With this work, the self-taught artist instantly showed a flair for creating 3D illusionary depth within a 2D medium, using his digital toolset to reshape the laws of physics. That layered feeling of depth is an element that often resurfaces in his work, the floating labyrinthian circles of ‘the maze’ can also be prominently found in the image’s front, middle and back planes. It’s not surprising that the artist is also a filmmaker, where the eye routinely gets tricked into forgetting the limitations of a photographed image’s dimensions. Elshamy’s work also embraces the symbolic richness of his country’s influential past, as we can see on full display in the work ‘the Queen’. Centered on a golden, Nefertiti like figure, the artwork’s details merge Western gothic influences with golden Ankhs, linking the artistic pasts of the two neighboring continents. And while the mythology of Ra and Osiris have had an unmistakable impact on the artist, he also doesn’t let himself be defined by them. In ‘Rise – Experiment 18’ we are seemingly urged to worship a very different god, a herald of technology born from within a crucifixion of microchips and wires. This can perhaps be seen as a sign of the advent of a new step in humanity’s evolution that was so markedly shaped on the banks of the Nile ages ago. Here again we find that trademark mirage of depth within the imagery. I was delighted to discover Amr’s artistic narratives, pushing the boundaries of adobe’s trademark software and am above all curious to see what futures he will imagine in the years to come. Amr Elshamy https://www.behance.net/hotamr

Are you secretly haunted by all the ‘things you wanted to say but never did’? Then Filipino artist Geloy Concepcion offers you a unique way to finally share them. When, three years after immigrating to the US, the photographer found himself facing a mental and artistic crisis, he turned to past work to try and rekindle his passion for the medium. While looking through his images he was drawn most to his b-roll shots, the blurry, over-and-under exposed stills that were rejected or deemed ‘unusable’. They made him think of an Instagram poll he launched a year prior, asking the question ‘What are things you wanted to say, but never did?’. An idea was forged and a new collaborative art project born. Using google forms and promising complete anonymity, Concepcion started to gather lost words and phrases, collecting intensely personal messages people wanted to share but never found the right outlet for. The artist became curator and started to pair these confessionals with his own photographs, altering them so that often only white silhouettes of those portrayed remain. This deceptively simple technique proved the perfect way to share this universal poetry of loss, disappointment and despair. What’s striking to me about this community driven endeavor, is how comforting it can be to read people’s darkest thoughts, perhaps proving that the world wide web doesn’t have to be as dauntingly lonesome as it sometimes appears. Scrolling through the collages felt quite cathartic because Geloy succeeds in capturing the beautiful and unique sadness of human existence in such a thoughtful way. Last week I was confronted with the sudden loss of a family member and I honestly didn’t feel like writing a curator’s corner. But then I recalled this project and it made me wonder, as one is bound to do, that if my cousin had been able to share some of the thoughts that drove him to that most desperate act, perhaps he would still be with us. So I hope that, through Geloy’s stunning work, you or those you care about feel able to share those thoughts that burden the most and above all, it helps people to feel like they’re not alone in the world to have them. Geloy Concepcion https://www.geloyconcepcion.com/

If anything good came out of the ongoing pandemic, it’s that it drove talents like SiIIDA to seek refuge in digital art. When the societal restrictions in the wake of the outbreak halted her plans to start art school, the young Japanese surrealist successfully begged her parents for iPad. Her artistic pseudonym was born and with the aid of social media the world was introduced to her unique style of illustrative painting. Translating her rich inner world into creative works showcases a distinct visual technique, one that feels inspired by traditional Japanese illustration peppered with a slightly macabre and manga-esque sensibility. The, at times quite literal, objectification of her dead-eyed female protagonists also reminded me of the biting social commentary of the late and great Tetsuya Ishida. But Siiilda’s universe is very much her own, filled with repressed dark desires and hopes, where pain and pleasure are often tightly interwoven. In the works presented here, we immediately see the artist’s signature: from an attentive focus on and love of hands to the contrasting color palette of brightly toned objects, clothes and backgrounds with the faded yellow and pale whiteness of the skin tones. A reddish aura breathes life into patches of skin and fingertips, as if to underline the lifeblood that pumps beneath their papery surface. Here again the artist seems to pay homage to the classic Shin Hanga illustration movement. In the four pieces shared, we feel an artist coming to grip with her inner and outer struggles, be it a handshaped mouth-masque (which the artist also created in sculpted form) or a burst of vomited roses. Touching and being touched remains a pattern throughout, how indifferent the characters might seem, that desire of closeness permeates in every digital stroke. It’s rare that a young artist so quickly finds her own voice, one that I hope we can keep experiencing through her creative endeavors in the hopefully less turbulent years to come. And to all our MoCDA followers, may 2023 be a year where you can be touched, both literally and figurative, perhaps already starting here by the bizarre beauty of SiIIDA’s imagination. SiIIDA https://www.instagram.com/silllllllllllll.da/

Is our society doomed to evolve into consumption addicted, massively overpopulated megalopolises and will we all be driven mad in the process? When diving headfirst into the madcap, illustrated universe of Korean digital artist Ju Yong Lee (better known as Mr. Misang/Anonymous), one can certainly image how this could be the case. His ongoing series ‘Modern Life is Rubbish’, frequently offered in both still and animated versions, takes us on a wild ride through scenes that at times evoke the spirit of anime greats like Satoshi Kon and Hayao Miyazaki at their most vibrant and surreal. The level of detail that these slices of dystopian dreamlife contain is at times mind boggling. Satire reigns supreme as we witness the production process of our golden dollars or join the worship of gigantic idols to human sadness. Mr. Misang’s alter ego, a masked figure in yellow trench coat, a wink perhaps to the film noir detectives of old, at times guides us through his work or is hidden away like pop surrealisms own ‘where’s Waldo’. Because there is indeed plenty to find within these detailed compositions, be it regurgitated fake news spewed out of the jaws of a doped massive hound or a bored ticket teller manning a broken-down empathy machine. What we see is both bizarrely familiar and wildly imaginative, like a fun-house mirror aimed directly at our modern world. It's a massive gift to be able to sharply criticize society while at the same time not taking yourself too seriously. A true 21st century artist, Lee often involves his audience in his process, at times producing multiple versions of an illustration and asking for feedback. It comes to no surprise then that his art thrives in the community and social media driven crypto arena, where the artist often pays it forward by organizing contents to re-interpret his creations, later incorporating the winners back into new works. It really takes a special person to not only create dreams, but to also be willing to share them with other budding artists. "Modern Life is Rubbish" (2022) by Ju Yong Lee https://ongroo.typeform.com/metalepsis

Does the religious iconography that inspired Western masters like Rubens and Vélazquez still influence modern digital artists today? When looking at the transcendental work of Edinburgh based digital sculptor Bill Elis, one can only conclude this to be the case. With a delightful fascination for the macabre, Elis offers depictions that feel at once reverential and sinister. His works often portray memento mori, reminders of the inevitability of death, with a realism that feels both profound and at times frightening. In ‘Forsaken by thy father’ for instance, we witness a decaying Christ in the clutches of desperate skeletal believers, a very different interpretation of a possible pending resurrection. His golden crowned Mother Mary is likewise a synergy of bones and gilded flowers, an eternal afterlife in Elis’s work often seems to have a very physical cost. That fine line between mortality and immortality is explored beautifully in his baroque tableaux, where we find the morbid decay of the grave painted in a golden light. A work like ‘Transcendence’ combines both the classical and the grotesque, where in a biblical scene a plethora of bronze tinted angels witness one of their number literally shedding its skin, revealing a cadaverous mortal essence. It almost feels like with his work, Bill tries to both honor and demystify some of the essential elements of the Christian faith, paradoxically making its angels feel more human by adding aging to the ageless. Even when we witness the flawless perfection of the marble and gilded seraph in ‘Resurrected’, the fleshless skull of the virgin still watches over this majestic being. Stylistically Elis finds inspiration in the detailed craftsmanship of the past, a level of care and detail is given to his 3D creations that mimics and at times perhaps surpasses that of his classical inspirations. It’s fascinating to discover how new artists reinterpret the biblical and mythological that is still such a dominant factor in our Western European fine art museums. It goes to show that the complicated relationship between art and religion hasn’t quite led to a final rupture just yet. "Mother" (2022) by Billelis https://www.billelis.com/