Quayola: Dissected Palette

About

In his work, Quayola conducts a series of observations of natural landscapes using extensive technological apparatuses. The datasets captured en plein air become the raw material for generating his computational paintings, which merge painterly substance with digital essence, giving rise to a new algorithmic aesthetic. The result is not merely a translation of nature into code, but a sophisticated reimagining of painterly tradition, where algorithms perform gestures once made by hand.

The exhibition Dissected Palette features two core series that articulate Quayola’s research: Pleasant Places and Pointillisme. Both were developed through a series of field data recordings in the Provençal countryside—landscapes that inspired generations of artists throughout the 19th century.

Pleasant Places is an homage to the pictorial tradition of landscape, composed of a series of digital paintings that explore the threshold between representation and abstraction.

Pointillisme, by contrast, is a celebration of the machine’s inherent inability to fully capture the complexity of natural data. Using high-precision laser scanning, Quayola attempts to translate the arboreal forms of the Provençal forests—but instead creates an ode to error, where gaps, distortions, and ruptures become expressive material.

In one of his interviews, Quayola remarked:

‘I’m fascinated by the Impressionist painters and their en plein air explorations. On one side using nature as a vehicle to discover new modes of visual synthesis, and on the other hand, having the process itself, the actual painting gestures, translated onto the canvas. The artwork which portrays both its subject as well as the process behind its making has always been very interesting to me, and something which is constantly driving my work.’

This statement is central to understanding Quayola’s practice, where the natural world, pictorial heritage, and algorithmic logic converge into hybrid creations. While deeply rooted in the tradition of landscape painting, his work departs from it to explore new visual languages and interactions between man and machine.      

Quayola’s exploration stands within a historical continuum, yet it opens new territory. Just as late 19th-century painters confronted the ruptures of industrial modernity by reinventing the language of painting, today Quayola asks what landscapes become when our gaze is shaped by data flows, algorithms, and hybridised forms of vision. His works oscillate between scientific observation and poetic abstraction, proposing a contemporary materialism rooted not in raw depiction, but in the active reconstitution of nature through technological means.