Virtual Reality Artist
Virtual reality sculpture, digital painting, and large-scale immersive works — carved between the ancient and the not-yet-imagined.
Virtual reality sculpture, digital painting, and large-scale immersive works — carved between the ancient and the not-yet-imagined.
Capstoning a three-year collaboration with Anyma at the Sphere in Las Vegas, Giant Swan unveiled Cathedral: a monumental 100-by-150-metre temple sculpted entirely in virtual reality at a one-to-one scale, over the course of six months — among the largest music visuals ever built for a live show.
Every surface was crafted digitally in VR by the hand of a single artist — transforming an intensely solitary creative practice into an immersive experience shared by thousands. “I’ve been here for a long time…” he said, as he finally unveiled the work.
Viewing the digital sculptures of Giant Swan is like stepping into a dream, where each object carries a multiplicity of meanings that can only be interpreted by the viewer themselves. The art is merely the catalyst for the encounter that brings each piece to its finished state — in the subjective experience.
Chunky, textural, anatomical forms combine with an evanescent lucidity: reality against unreality, exaggeration against precision. A technical prowess bent toward images that are at once perplexing and oddly familiar — shaking the lethargy from the eyes.
Some of the work insists on leaving virtual reality behind and becoming physical — taking shape as something that can be worn, held, or stood beside. Wearable, 3D-printed sculpture is the clearest expression of this so far: combining techniques borrowed from traditional sculpture, hand painting, enamel glazing, and intentional aging, each piece carries the presence of an unearthed artifact while remaining inherently futuristic.
It's the same reverence for nature and fascination with emerging technology that drives the VR work, now tested against gravity, material, and touch — a way of bringing the imagined back into the waking world it first came from.
Giant Swan's art emanates from a place both familiar and not of this world, feeling unknown yet strangely personal, possessing the same ethereal quality of a long-forgotten dream. Raised among the Australian bush, he feels as much at home beneath a cathedral of trees as within the boundless possibilities of virtual reality. That reverence for nature quietly permeates his practice, shaping images that offer the same quiet reassurance as flowing water or the chorus of birds at dawn. His artworks are discoveries earned through deep periods of introspection and inward exploration. Giving form to emotions through forms that seek to mend the fractures of time's inevitable decay and to bring union to the feeling of separation between himself and others.
He chooses Virtual Reality as his medium and uses it both as a journal and a sketchbook. Working intuitively from dreams, memories, and feelings, the bridge between imagination and reality is central to his art-making practice. He aims to render scenes which people can inhabit and encounter, taking a solely personal experience and bringing it into a shared space where viewers can perhaps recognize something of themselves, using the artwork as a mirror, much as he does while creating it.
The medium of Virtual Reality allows Giant Swan to create artworks untethered by the natural laws of waking reality, and yet, paradoxically, the weightless lucidity made possible through VR speaks to common human experiences which resonate deeply with the viewer. Tragedy and doom, ecstasy and joy, mystery and renewal coexist within forms that seem to have surfaced from somewhere just beyond the horizon of day-to-day language, expressable only through the act of creation. He channels ephemeral mental states and infuses them back into the external world with his art — thereby turning the personal exploration of the creative process into something which can be encountered, examined, and even held by the viewer.
Each image brings Giant Swan closer to completing a circle that can never fully close. The work begins in solitude but finds its release through communion with others. To transform his imagination into a shared experience for others to behold, he mimics nature's uncanny ability to beget new life. To give shape to what cannot be spoken, yet can be deeply felt, is the cathartic impulse that continually inspires him to return to the studio, day after day, where the circle begins again.
The artist's life may appear to be a dreary, never-ending toil for some, but it is a joyful existence for him. The mysterious challenge of attempting to capture ever-in-vain each moment as it slips between his fingers and lands onto the canvas, and each image brings him closer to the ultimate truth.
Written by Frank Pomes, Artist
Occasional notes on new work, releases, and shows — nothing more.