The Bite Magazine - Autumn/Winter 2024 - Issue 36
Jada Brookes is mesmerised by artist Caio Locke’s detailed utopian cityscape paintings that set you in a dream-like ambience. biteartist T hrough the unique and meticulous handling of colour and pattern in his architectural artworks, Caio Locke employs perspective anomalies, optical depth and intricate composition. His surreal cities’ interwoven interior and exterior worlds capture the freedom to dream and create. The artist explores his preoccupations with philos- ophy, culture, history, and future concepts using ar- chitectural structures, painting, design, and sculp- ture mediums. Locke’s etchings are described as a combination of mathematical diligence and controlled abstraction, where reality is sieved through a dream-like filter. They assimilate recognisable motifs into utopian projections akin to a hypnagogic state of conscious- ness transitioning between wakefulness and sleep. While addressing self-transcendence and Hegelian synthesis between inner and outer realities, pat- terns, and shapes, the artist places the viewer on a threshold between time, dream, and reality. The compulsion to create worlds through imag- ination inspired him to become an artist. “At the start, you absorb from artists that have gone before, looking through books, going from one exhibition or museum to another. Individual style emerges partly from this infusion, but I found the key to be when it breaks from those influences and becomes personal.” Art captures his attention through origi- nality and the technique to convey inventive energy. “That’s when you can sense the soul of the work and the artist.” His first creative piece involved a spaceship. Cur- rently, the artist is fixated on conglomerate cities. “They have their own ‘DNA’ through the layers of architecture, history, and the way generations shape every iteration,” he explained. “I look for flickers of future in the past and present and use illusory space and a sense of curvilinear time to connect everything. Underlying my style is a desire to see these manmade places echo the natural world.” Cosmopolitan Freedom To Dream
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