FIRE BLAST (CHARIZARD AND SHINY CHARMANDER)

In the series I CHOOSE YOU!, Skye Nicolas continues his exploration of liminal spaces (defined as transitional or transformative zones of existence), leveraging ubiquitous AI-driven technology through the widely popular augmented reality game Pokémon Go. To create each work, Nicolas conceptually reframes Jannis Kounellis’ UNTITLED (12 HORSES) (1969), a landmark instance of postmodern art in which the presence of live animals was crucial to the finished piece. Here, Nicolas initiates contact with the game's character models, summoning digitized versions of beloved Pokémon characters to life in an interactive augmented reality environment. The artist’s discerning eye and instinctive hand manipulate Pokémon Go’s AI-driven photo capture engine to carefully place, pose, and document these virtual creatures in settings consistent with Pokémon lore. The images are fed to an AI-powered application, which then recreates and renders them in emojis (a semiotic motif employed by the artist), signifying the final stage of the image-making process.

The digital canvas, engulfed in emojis, discloses the artist's painterly roots, exuding a palpable rhythmic signature. Its expressive gestural forms and sweeping textures, reminiscent of impressionist brushwork and analog abstract paintings, beckon to be viewed in multiple planes of perception and contemplative states.

Formally and conceptually, the works carry on the historic and cultural tradition of fantastic mythical creatures breaching our physical world (as depicted in Japanese yōkai scroll art from the Edo period in the 16th century) while reflecting on our postmodern sensibilities in openly exploring parasocial relationships with anthropomorphized digital entities and considering their role in a rapidly evolving digital economy.