AI + Art = Iconoclasts
If you make things, you know that having the right tool for the job improves the outcome. If you want to create art that describes life in the 21st century, then software is a good tool.
“Pool Day 1,” 2021
To help introduce this 21st-century art movement to a larger audience, Art Meta has produced The Digital Art Mile. Cleverly, they’ve located their mile of venues near the premier Art Basel art fair in Switzerland.
The producers hope to entice the fair's Big A art crowd to venture outside the gates for a look at the cutting-edge.
The Digital Art Mile, now in its second year, will present a display of 1980s videos and art made with Quantel's Paintbox, one of the first digital drawing tools. It’s also hosting several panel discussions and relevant exhibitions, including one featuring NFTs and another curated by the Kate Vass Gallerie featuring digital prints.
Photo of Kate Vass, and details from Osinachi’s “My Body, My Crime” 2020, “Green Bottle” 2019
At The Digital Art Mile, she'll be presenting Iconoclast, a solo exhibition by the artist Osinachi.
With few tech resources at his disposal, the native Nigerian adapted the drawing tools in Microsoft Word to his purpose. Considering how pared-down Word’s graphic suite is, the results are impressive.
Using a personal computer allowed Osinachi to create his vision in private.
As a contemporary, gay man living in a country where roughly 91% of the population "strongly disapprove" of homosexuality, safety was a priority. Suppose he had chosen to paint on canvas, instead. In that case, he'd attract attention by purchasing the necessary materials and making room for a studio and a place to store/hide the paintings from unsympathetic eyes. By using a standard computer, he could work undetected and safely share his finished files with the global art world.
Details from “Dear /Est”, 2025, “Buy / Bread”, 2025, “Black:Ship”, 2023, “The Letter Readers” 2024
Osinachi's bold, colorful images recall the art of painter David Hockney. Unlike Hockney, though, whose pop-graphic style featured recognizable individuals, Osinachi conceals his models' identities by turning them into digitized archetypes.
Curiously, the figures don't have eyes.
They have expressive lips, noses, even eyebrows, but where the eyes should be, there's nothing. This detail is not an omission. It's an invitation into the artist's head. To solve the puzzle of why he left them out, you need to imagine the world through his eyes.
“God’s / Eye-View,” 2025
Vass curated the exhibit with examples of work made over time to capture the artist's development alongside Microsoft's endless updates. Constant updates and life-changing innovations, or disruptions, are another feature unique to computer-based art and also a feature of 21st-century life.
As Vass states, Osinachi uses his own social disorientation as a format to explore the broader dislocating turmoil of the digital age.
Details from “Choose The Man You Will Become,” 2020 and “Adam and Steve” 2024
