Born in London in 1958, Ray Caesar is an internationally renowned artist and undisputed leader of Digital Art. He has worked in several fields, and exhibited his works in some of the most respected galleries worldwide. Each one of his works is like a little piece of a larger puzzle. Similar to Mary Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein, who deconstructs the human body in order to reconstruct it, so does Ray Caesar acts in his creations, he brings together fragments of decorative, baroque and deco styles arranged in architectural sceneries, following his tastes, to give birth to eternal beauty belonging to a timeless era.
Thanks to this mix and visual codes from the early 1900s, his works really stand out for their unique personality and charm that mirror those of the artist himself. Master of digital technique, Caesar is a reference point for all the artists who decide to adopt this style.
Caesar works in Maya (a 3D modelling software used for digital animation effects in film and game industries), to create his figures and the virtual realms in which they live. Through this program, he builds up digital models with invisible skeletons and anatomical junctions that can be distorted and manipulated to assume any pose. He wraps the models in lavish textures, adding elaborate headgears, eyelashes and fingernails. He then places them in digitally lit impeccably detailed 3D ambience, built with architectural arrangements of windows, wallpapers, curtains and furnishings. Caesar’s meticulous process involves elements of drawing, painting, collage and sculpture. With full control over his figures’ personality and their surroundings, Caesar’s craft represents a modern way to play with the human figure, as alternative to the brush on a canvas or an advanced extension of the childhood obsession of playing with dolls. This reflects the artist’s fascination with aspects of the feminine and also the world of children and his elaborate technique is what gives him the power to manipulate his figures and to confer in them the meaning he desires.
Ray Caesar’s “digital brushes” create paintings where seductive, hypnotic and alien female icons reflect the artist’s twisted mind. His ice queens, with their regal bearing, emanate a feeling of nostalgia for another time. Yet their innocent and naïve look can turn suddenly into supernatural strength unveiling a darker more sinister face. Creepy details come up from the artist’s imagination to drag the viewers’ into deconsecrated sanctuaries of the unconscious, where the ghostly figures carry macabre secrets and hidden truths only memories can explain.
In Caesar’s career there are remarkable exhibitions including: the “Art from the New World” show at the City Museum of Bristol, along with the “Pop Surrealism” show at the Museo Carandente of Spoleto, his participation in “Hey! Modern art and Pop Culture” at the Musée de la Halle St Pierre in Paris, “Turn the Page” at The Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) and “Cross The Streets” held at MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome Italy in 2017. In Italy, his artworks have been also exhibited in a special Retrospective exhibition “The Troubles with Angels” held at Palazzo Saluzzo Peasana in Turin.
