The new era of arts embraces technology and art to form a new world. Six young artists on using technology in their work, the border between "real" and "virtual," and what it all means for the future of art itself.

<a href="https://www.hockney.com/" title="David Hockney" target="_blank" rel="noopener">David Hockney</a> famously assured, &ldquo;Optical devices certainly don&rsquo;t paint pictures...the use of them diminishes no great artist&rdquo; while proposing his hotly debated Hockney-Falco thesis. The theory, crafted with physicist <a href="https://profiles.arizona.edu/person/falco" title="Charles M. Falco" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Charles M. Falco</a>, uprooted our understanding of art history by examining the <a href="https://www.academia.edu/28131622/Optics_and_the_old_masters" title="Old Masters" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Old Masters</a>&rsquo; usage of camera technology. <a href="https://www.caravaggio.org/" title="Caravaggio" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Caravaggio</a>, <a href="https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/diego-velazquez" title="Vel&aacute;zquez" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Vel&aacute;zquez</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leonardo-da-Vinci" title="Da Vinci">Da Vinci</a>, <a href="https://www.vermeer.com/" title="Vermeer" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Vermeer</a>, and <a href="https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/rembrandt" title="Rembrandt" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Rembrandt</a> were all put under a microscope for their probable use of early optical instruments such as the camera obscura and/or curved mirrors&mdash;technological advances that fundamentally altered the course of art history, allowing artists to, in effect, trace their subjects. Centuries later, use of these technologies was ubiquitous. Technology had entered the creative process, dictating the practices of <a href="https://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/" title="Robert Rauschenberg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Robert Rauschenberg</a>, <a href="https://lichtensteinfoundation.org/" title="Roy Lichtenstein" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Roy Lichtenstein</a>, <a href="https://www.warhol.org/" title="Andy Warhol" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Andy Warhol</a>, and <a href="https://jamesturrell.com/" title="James Turrell" target="_blank" rel="noopener">James Turrell</a>. The tools we use to create propelled the evolution of art as we know it.
While digital art is still settling somewhere between painting, sculpture, and architecture, L&rsquo;OFFICIEL&rsquo;s roundup of contemporary artists focuses solely on those who are mixing different technological approaches with the more-or-less traditional world of painting: from Maja Djordjevic&rsquo;s obsession with glitchy, pixelated aesthetics to Austin Lee&rsquo;s translation of &ldquo;the uninhibited and intuitive process of gestural mark-making from one media to another&rdquo; and, ultimately, to C&eacute;sar Piette&rsquo;s obsessive removal of the human hand from his computer-designed paintings. Just as Renaissance art emphasized the realistic depiction of the material world and the place of humans in it, these six international artists are cooking up new ways of breaking down the barrier shielding us from the binary world of ones and zeros. Here, in their own words, they muse on the place technology holds in their work.

Maja Djordjevic

"MY HEART HAS BEEN GLUED TOO MANY TIMES," 2022

DJORDJEVIC IN HER BELGRADE STUDIO, 2021

We grew up on &lsquo;<a href="https://gamerant.com/best-90s-arcade-games/" title="90s arcade games" target="_blank" rel="noopener">90s arcade games</a>, <a href="https://www.sega.com/" title="SEGA" target="_blank" rel="noopener">SEGA</a>, and <a href="https://jspaint.app/" title="MS Paint" target="_blank" rel="noopener">MS Paint</a>&mdash;a pixelated aesthetic. MS Paint marked my childhood: full of blank sheets, different kinds of pencils, and being&nbsp;able to find the right color with just one click. Back then, I used <a href="https://paint.js.org/" title="Paint" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Paint</a> to draw dinosaurs, fairies, and space, but also to explore sexuality. I remember gathering with my girlfriends at my place and drawing what girls and boys have under their clothes. It was fun for us, and the drawings could be easily deleted with one click, so that no one could know what we were drawing. Later on, during my university years, I came back to MS Paint and used it as my personal diary. I guess this is how the naked pixelated girl emerged. Shouting with&nbsp;a wide-open mouth, she loudly encourages herself, another woman, or a man. She loves with passion and courageously deals with various life situations. She is strong; she is&nbsp;strength itself. I eventually wanted to bring that girl to life by transferring her from a digital image to oil on canvas&nbsp;(more specifically, enamel on canvas) in a traditional way,&nbsp;painting her manually, pixel by pixel, using no standstill or tape&mdash;exactly the way I would do it in MS Paint. Due to its glossiness, enamel is very effective in replicating the digital screen shine. MS Paint unfortunately went defunct in 2015, so now I am obliged to use other paint programs; however, my mind still thinks in pixels.

Gao Hang

"FIRST, FUCK YOUR PROTEIN POWDER," 2022

Gao Hang photographed by Emily Gao

I believe the evolution of technology navigates towards truth&nbsp;if there is any&mdash;and so does painting. While pursuing the understanding of humanity, generations of technologies are&nbsp;left behind as not only trash on Earth, but also as documents human evolution. Sometimes when you run into old&nbsp;drawings&mdash;operating rudimentarily as designed by their tech devices, it just hits you that they were designed for&nbsp;some &ldquo;discontinued&rdquo; human behaviors and visual fantasy.
The digital world, social media, and the <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-the-metaverse/" title="Metaverse" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Metaverse</a>&mdash;technologies that grew up alongside me&mdash;formed my visual language. I use colors and forms to create characters that resonate with the early 21st century and the first 3-D residents in the digital world; these characters were not made as artwork but as the essential function of new technology. They are congruent to depictions of bulls and people in cave drawings&mdash;operating rudimentarily as designed by their creator. So, we are facing the term &ldquo;<a href="https://www.theartstory.org/movement/primitivism/" title="Primitivism" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Primitivism</a>&rdquo; once more in the digital world. Like an archaeologist looking at cave paintings for the first time, I have been fascinated with those raw, blurry 3-D forms from day one: they&rsquo;re full of honesty, potential, bravery, mystery, and shock, as pieces of technology left behind for a generation that no longer exists.&nbsp;

Vickie Vainionp&auml;&auml;

"Soft Body Dynamics," 2022, Detail

Vickie Vainionpää photographed by Emelle Massariol

Art, artists, and technology are simply inseparable. The root of the word technology is the Ancient Greek techne, which means &ldquo;the making of things;&rdquo; encompassing craftsmanship, art, music, and other skilled practices. Artists are natural technologists.&nbsp;
Tech has been intricately tangled up with art-making, vision and perception from the camera obscura to the oil-paint tube, and now the Internet and digital media. New technology always facilitates new ways of seeing&mdash;and new ways of seeing are the primary domain of the artist.
<a href="https://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/art" title="Robert Rauschenberg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Robert Rauschenberg</a> said, &ldquo;If you don&rsquo;t accept technology, you better go to another place because no place here is safe. Nobody wants to paint rotten oranges anymore.&rdquo; Technology is not a theme, style, or trend. It is an ever-present reality. Many argue that technology distances us from our true nature, but I believe we are growing toward it. This <a href="https://fineartamerica.com/art/paintings/idealism" title="idealism paintings" target="_blank" rel="noopener">idealism</a> is woven into the images I make. We are part of a universe that flows with forward momentum. To be human is to engage with technology, and it&rsquo;s imperative that artists engage to better understand our fears and ultimately take an active role in shaping our collective future.

C&eacute;sar Piette

"Pierrot in sRGB," 2022

CESAR PIETTE PORTRAIT

By using 3-D software to produce my paintings, I wish to comment on this particular moment in human history in which simulation has become ever-present in our lives. The <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/feature/What-is-the-metaverse-An-explanation-and-in-depth-guide" title="Metaverse" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Metaverse</a>, <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/augmented-reality-AR#:~:text=Augmented%20reality%20(AR)%20is%20the,overlaid%20on%20top%20of%20it." title="augmented reality" target="_blank" rel="noopener">augmented reality</a>, and <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/learn/what-are-generative-art-nfts/" title="NFT" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NFTs</a> are just recent examples of this trend. Video games, film, architecture, and design have already been producing visuals with 3-D programs for decades, but today it is just blooming through the proliferation of electronic devices. The software allows me simultaneously to work in the tradition of Representation, to depict a reality, while also constructing my own. I like to create confusion in the viewer&rsquo;s head when they are looking at my paintings. I wish to investigate this delicate border between artificiality and reality, and thus produce high-resolution paintings. The craft involved in executing the works is an effort to resist digitization. But it is a doomed effort because the war between humans and computers is already lost.

Ahn Tae Won

"Let's be butterfly," 2022

Ahn Tae Won

People experience a sensual state when the boundary between real and digital becomes blurred; due to exposure to <a href="https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/03/visual-design-language-building-blocks/" title="digital-based visual language">digital-based visual language</a>, incoherent, nonmaterial images have spread deeply in our daily lives.
By putting digital-based <a href="https://study.com/academy/lesson/nonmaterial-culture-definition-components-examples.html" title="nonmaterial art" target="_blank" rel="noopener">nonmaterial</a> images into analog reality, I try to use the senses to reestablish the border between &ldquo;virtual&rdquo; and &ldquo;real.&rdquo; My primary process is derived from an error in calculating the output value of a digital image represented by a computer. Due to the instability of digital programs, computers twist the inputs and outputs for unknown reasons and produce blurred results, distinct from the original purpose. Although this is technically a failed result, the unintended image drifts along the border of real and digital.
I intentionally distort what I&rsquo;ve collected through the web. The airbrush helps me recreate the digital image that has &ldquo;failed&rdquo; on top of a flat or structural surface. I create a distinct harmony from the disharmony of the image, in which familiar objects are derailed into surreal transformation.

Austin Lee

How 6 Artists Are Intrepreting the Digital Art Landscape

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