“Identity is always deferred, never complete.”
—Jacques Derrida

Skygolpe’s Paint on Pixel series is a bold exploration of the intersection between digital and traditional media. With this project, the artist continues his deep investigation into themes of self-awareness, abstraction, perception, and the evolving role of technology in shaping human creativity. The works on display not only reflect the growing influence of digital art and NFTs (as each painting has its certificate of authenticity on the blockchain) but also challenge the viewer to reconsider the currently tenuous boundaries between the organic and the mechanical, the human and the machine.
Skygolpe’s work is deeply influenced by the evocative power of poetry, the rigor of dialectical reasoning, and the profound inquiries of philosophy. His work seeks to create a new visual syntax, one that merges the language of traditional painting with the possibilities of new media.

The result is a body of work that is both reflective and complex, grounded in the psychological and emotional effects that technology has on our lives. When confronted with the canvases, viewers are invited to reflect on their relationship with reality and representation. Skygolpe’s work compels us to reconsider our understanding of identity in the age of AI, where human experience and machine influence are constantly in contention. The artist transcends traditional portraiture, offering self-portraits that lose their identity, shape, and traits. These “faces” are abstracted forms, allowing the viewer to see themselves in the works, reflected as colorful but anonymous reflections.

At its core, Paint on Pixel is a study in contrasts and synthesis. Skygolpe manipulates the digital imagery using advanced software and algorithms, while also embracing the tactile immediacy of painting—layering brushstrokes and textures onto his canvases. The result is a confounding blend of human and machine, where it becomes difficult to distinguish between the artist’s hand and the precision of digital tools. This duality reflects the artist’s broader exploration of the increasingly intertwined digital and physical worlds, where imperfection becomes an essential part of the process. In Paint on Pixel’s series exhibited in New York City, color plays a central role conveying emotional depth and dynamism.

The juxtaposition of colors, often in unexpected combinations, creates a sense of movement that seems to go beyond the frame. The paint drips down onto the empty abstracted faces, symbolizing a deliberate lack of control, but it is controlled chaos that speaks to the unpredictable nature of human emotion and technology’s impact. As technology increasingly becomes a means of communicating data in abstract forms, Skygolpe uses abstraction to navigate this new landscape. His work offers a vision of the future, where robotics and creativity are not opposing forces but partners. He confronts the profound effects of computers on our daily life by offering a glimpse into a future where art, digitalization and humanity are seamlessly interconnected. However, his work is distinctly human despite its digital origins. It reflects the immediacy of the artist’s brushstrokes and the physicality of the creative process. Through this innovative series, Skygolpe invites us to embrace the advances we have by uniting the tangible and the immaterial in the most philosophical way.

We constantly struggle to define ourselves and everything around us in a moment when even the purest definitions might be mere constructs of artificial intelligence or hidden truths masked as clarity. When discerning news or images becomes a challenge, Skygolpe presents figures embodying existential crises, transmitting meditative peace and anxiety at the same time, protagonists and antagonists of our century. The paradox within each canvas is that, while being self-portraits of the artist, they are, at the same time, all of us.

Skygolpe’s artistic trajectory can be seen as a Heideggerian reflection on how technology transforms our relationship with the world, reshaping our perception and sense of identity. Both Heidegger and Skygolpe propose that modern technology is not merely a set of tools but a means of revelation that alters our understanding of being. As Heidegger wrote, “Technology changes not only what we do but also who we are, by shaping how we relate to the world and others.”

—Tania Fer