How far do we need to be convinced that something is real? Digital technologies are presenting new opportunities for art and design. Discover three creatives rendering new worlds. Enter illusory buildings and impossible landscapes – each one treading the boundaries of fact and fiction.
Massimo Colonna
Massimo Colonna (b. 1986) has spent many years working in postproduction and retouching, during which he has developed a passion for renders and abstracted landscapes. The images invite the viewer into exotic landscapes filled with surreal objects – statues, ladders and sheets. They are inspired by the architecture of Luis Barragán and Ricardo Bofill. Each digitally enhanced composition offers a journey into a pastel utopia where inanimate objects become active participants. Balls, balloons, plastic bags and paper planes are transfixed in moments of stillness. The results are both unnerving and visually satisfying – each location has been designed down to the last detail, defying gravity along the way.
Christophe Barneau
What if a daydream was brought to life? Shadows extending freely across a tiled floor, a mirror standing upright on a table, a pool of water rippling to its own rhythm: these are the scenarios that fill the following images. Entitled New Perspectives, the featured works are a series of digital renders with no beginning, middle or end. Fleshed out with warm, earthy tones, each of the pictures casts a warm filter over virtual interiors and their items. The ambiguous locations burst with energy and contemporary stylistics. With seven years’ experience in graphics and branding, Christophe Barneau (b. 1989) is a multi-disciplinary designer creating his own worlds and pushing the boundaries of space in the process.
Alexis Christodoulou
A self-taught 3D artist living in Cape Town, South Africa, Alexis Christodoulou (b. 1983) has spent the last four years building a collection of works that focuses on the creation of imaginary architecture. Based on a life-long interest in digital worlds and multidimensional graphics, Christodoulou extends realities through rendering new spaces. Offering a clean, seamless aesthetic, each composition – which starts as a sketch – is influenced by the boundless concepts and muted palettes of leading artists and designers such as David Chipperfield and Aldo Rossi. Shadows cut across endless landscapes, whilst ripples of light sit on the surface of undetermined pools. The images ask questions about the evolving methods of post-production and their place within the appreciation and realisation of contemporary art.
