Biography
Characteristic of the artistic practice of Travess Smalley (1986, US) is the ease with which he switches between working in a physical and digital realm. He compares his way of working to a "feedback loop": his art originates from a process in which he prints out digital images, edits them with physical tools, digitalizes them to be edited with software such as Photoshop, and finally has them printed again. This creates hybrid works that are somewhere in between analogue and digital, that can be confusing at first sight: you wonder whether you're looking at a screen saver or a piece of fabric.
Smalley experiments both in his studio and on his computer, not bothered by the separation between different media. In fact, a kind of cross-fertilization takes places as he approaches physical craftsmanship from a digital tradition: "I find that my work is freshest when I am moving between fields and mediums on a regular basis. My objects inform my Photoshop files and vice versa.” Although Smalley also creates works that exist exclusively online, he is very interested in materiality and textures. He actively examines the urgency of actually printing out his work in the final stage, when pixels are converted into physical structures.
Artist website: www.travesssmalley.com