Did you just say digital embroidery?! Vaka Valo returns with some astonishing new work

We love it when artists make a total u-turn and create a fairly huge project that is entirely different to the style for which we know and love them. Vaka Valo, whose fantastic air-safety manual-esque illustration work we posted about in April is back on the radar with this new collection of expressionist-inspired digital embroideries. “My projects begin with curiosity,” Vaka tells us “then a series of ongoing intensive experiments follow. If I like the results, a system is introduced and a project organically arises from that. I just stay very curious. Ideas are too limiting.”

Tricky on the eye unless viewed from a distance, these surreal images seem to be heavily manipulated photographs. “The raw material comes from images I captured from the television in China while living there. Following a long series of experiments, I digitally processed the images using a method analogous to subtractive synthesis in sound, manipulating/distorting the visual wave forms already present. Then, I have created a template for the digital embroidery onto canvas. It is an ongoing process, but I am happy with the results.”