Lost.Optics’ art flows from a need for constant experimentation. In his first solo show in Vienna, the artist takes algorithms as a playground for creation. First, he creates a sketch, a first draft. This sketch with its colors, shapes, lines, and gradients has a specific “DNA”, an internal structure with an underlying coding. For some art works Lost.Optics uses a filtering software program that changes sequences of the “DNA” and creates a new image. The result is a work that is a combination of conscious creation and with an additional random configuration.
While “the grid” is a notion that originated in graphic design, inevitably every artist faces his own type of grid; be it the size of the canvas, the tools he has available, the knowledge he accumulated to that point etc. Hence, for this body of work, Lost.Optics initiated a process through which he is consciously defining, mending and interpreting a conceptual grid to produce each piece.
Taking inspiration from systems art, more specifically generative art and process art, he uses a specific recipe approach to which he then incorporates elements specific to printmaking and thus a form of randomness, to produce in the end pieces that are both directed and aleatory. Playing with serendipity, he discovers the final artworks as he makes them.
LOST.OPTICS (b. 1986, Romania)
Lost.Optics is a painter and muralist. He has become a distinct and prevailing voice in the Romanian contemporary art landscape while being recognized for his street art interventions and for his particular formal approach; a mix of geometric abstraction and rhythmic compositions. In Lost.Optics’ artistic laboratory the elements experimented upon are a peculiar blend of hyper-controlled formalism and the experimental spirit of urban art.
Text by Elvira Lupșa
