Since 2017, New Media and Digital Artist Martin Lukas Ostachowski has focused his artistic practice exploring re-appropriations of cloud imagery in both physical and digital mediums. Inspired by the fleeting immateriality of cloud formations, Ostachowski initiates a tangible relationship between memories, images, data storage and atmospheric objects.
Clouds are in a constant state of change and flux – fragile yet always evolving and dissipating. Ostachowski’s work establishes symbolic connections between clouds and the illusive prominent structures of Blockchain. Though representative of much value, the precarious structure relies on individual nodes. If everyone disconnected their nodes, the Blockchain could dissolve just like clouds in a windy sky.
Approaching paper paintings with a combination of processes such as weaving, hand and laser cutting, he illuminates the layers of fragility within authoritarian definitions. Each new work integrates the tensions between fragility and powerful constant evolution.
The artist began exploring blockchain technology and generative aesthetics in 2017. Since then, he has constantly used technology in his artistic practice and production of artworks. The resulting images consistently oscillate between chance and control.
Ostachowski’s pictorial compositions emerge as neo-paintings, formed by prominent folds, layering, and illusions of transparency. He explores spatial and organizational structures in which geometry is more or less visible. Freedom of results is welcomed by the artist, as the role of chance is integral to all sorts of clouds. Ostachowski’s works are enthralling in their strangeness, transforming the seamless aesthetic of clouds into a familiar yet depersonalized, distortion of patterns. The results are captivating and surreal.
Martin Lukas Ostachowski was born in 1984 in Katowice, Poland, and lives and works in Montreal. His work has been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions; most recently at Icons of Crypto Art with the Dubai Design District (Dubai, 2022) and Bitcoin Renaissance at the Bitcoin 2022 Conference (Miami, 2022). His work can be found in numerous institutional, corporate, and private collections, including the Museum of Crypto Art (France) and the MOCA (USA). Ostachowski won 2nd place in the show “It’s a New World” (Ephimera Digital Art Gallery, Toronto) and the International Art Rights Prize with the AB Factory Cultural Association (Cagliari, Italy). He was recently invited to be a member of the artist council of the American MOCA.
A distinguished speaker, Ostachowski has recently been invited to present at the Kunsthaus Zürich, and at NFT in America at Montalban Theater in Hollywood, CA. Dedicated to the current experience of blockchains and crypto-art, Ostachowski’s seminal research about Crypto Art has been published by Leonardo Magazine (MIT) and Arxiv (Cornell).
