How does one convey a sense of space and materiality through digital abstraction? For fifteen years, Nicolas Sassoon pursued this question through his artistic practice, using the visual language of early computer graphics.
Each animation from SLABS is created using a moiré pattern technique and are rendered with streaks of hard-edged pixels and limited color palettes. The pixelated textures and colors are composed to divide the screen in horizontal and vertical arrangements, like slices of digital matter stacked against each other. The resulting animations appear as high-contrast, kinetic works that evoke natural features, geological formations, imaginary structures, or abstract compositions.
At large, these compositions relate to many histories of abstraction in painting, op art, moving image, and computer graphics: from the optical paintings of Bridget Riley to the moiré sculptures of Jesús Rafael-Soto, from the experimental video works of the Vasulka’s to the pixelated maps of The Legend of Zelda.
SLABS can be viewed both horizontally and vertically. SLABS can be displayed as “wallpapers” in both metaverse architectures and physical spaces.
