ctrl_me examines how digital platforms influence our relationship to bodies, intimacy, and society. The work
translates the ephemeral aesthetics of pornographic interfaces into an analogue medium, confronting viewers
with their own role in the interplay of visibility, desire, and consumption. Rather than a mere representation,
a hybrid space emerges: surface becomes body, the digital turns into matter, ecstasy becomes reflection.
translates the ephemeral aesthetics of pornographic interfaces into an analogue medium, confronting viewers
with their own role in the interplay of visibility, desire, and consumption. Rather than a mere representation,
a hybrid space emerges: surface becomes body, the digital turns into matter, ecstasy becomes reflection.
The work explores how digital practices shape our perception of intimacy, desire, and publicness. Drawing
from the aesthetics of pornographic interfaces, a fleeting digital screenshot is translated into an analogue
medium. This process reveals the tension between consumption and reflection, surface and depth: a space in
which digital ecstasy is transformed into a physical object.
from the aesthetics of pornographic interfaces, a fleeting digital screenshot is translated into an analogue
medium. This process reveals the tension between consumption and reflection, surface and depth: a space in
which digital ecstasy is transformed into a physical object.
ctrl_me investigates the intersections of digital intimacy, desire, and social self-presentation. At its core lies the visual language of porn sites and their typical interface – windows, tabs, frames – structures that simultaneously create distance and simulate closeness. By transferring this fleeting, immaterial experience into the analogue medium of painting, a rupture occurs: the digital moment, usually endlessly accessible, interchangeable, and ephemeral, is here materialized, slowed down, and made strange.
The use of canvas fabric, acrylic paint, and soft pastels, later coated with epoxy resin, is deliberately ambivalent. The glossy surface evokes the look of screens and monitors, yet feels heavy, physical, and final. Viewers encounter a work that oscillates between painting and screen – a projection of digital ecstasy into the physical space of art.
Thematically, the work asks how digital practices shape our perception of bodies, sexuality, and intimacy. Porn sites are spaces where extreme openness and anonymity coexist: people share their bodies, their pleasures, their fantasies – within a system that economizes this information, filters it through algorithms, and translates it into aestheticized surfaces. The tension between individual exposure and industrial standardization lies at the core of the work.
At the same time, Digital Ecstasy reflects on the role of art itself: What does it mean to create images when our ways of seeing are increasingly shaped by digital interfaces? What kinds of desire, shame, or voyeurism inscribe themselves into painting when it becomes infused with the codes of the digital?
The work thus situates itself at the intersection of painting, media critique, and performance. It is less a finished image than an open field of thought on digital ecstasy as both collective experience and social symptom.
The use of canvas fabric, acrylic paint, and soft pastels, later coated with epoxy resin, is deliberately ambivalent. The glossy surface evokes the look of screens and monitors, yet feels heavy, physical, and final. Viewers encounter a work that oscillates between painting and screen – a projection of digital ecstasy into the physical space of art.
Thematically, the work asks how digital practices shape our perception of bodies, sexuality, and intimacy. Porn sites are spaces where extreme openness and anonymity coexist: people share their bodies, their pleasures, their fantasies – within a system that economizes this information, filters it through algorithms, and translates it into aestheticized surfaces. The tension between individual exposure and industrial standardization lies at the core of the work.
At the same time, Digital Ecstasy reflects on the role of art itself: What does it mean to create images when our ways of seeing are increasingly shaped by digital interfaces? What kinds of desire, shame, or voyeurism inscribe themselves into painting when it becomes infused with the codes of the digital?
The work thus situates itself at the intersection of painting, media critique, and performance. It is less a finished image than an open field of thought on digital ecstasy as both collective experience and social symptom.
ctrl_me, 2025, Acrylic, soft pastels and epoxy on canvas, 207 x 189 cm
