KASSEUS is a multidiscipline audiovisual artist, combining classical artist techniques with augmented reality, experiential events and virtual reality in The Luxury Club X (TLCX).
“In an art context, Pluralism refers to the late 1960s and 1970s when art, politics and culture merged as artists began to believe in a more socially and politically responsive form of art.
Pluralist Artist KASSEUS is respecting cultural traditions and preserving group identities whilst maintaining his unique identity and style. KASSEUS takes control of the entire process - he finds his own models and photographs them to reflect their unique personalities & distinct characteristics through layering the images with colors and combining elements to create a sexy collage.
ART” - HOUSE OF L - Lana Carlson
ART
Utilising mixed media to discuss hyper-sexualisation, sexual commodification and the Western obsession with sex in advertising, he is an artist with a trans-modernist gaze, mixing the sheen of fashion photography with textures of street art, forming a mosaic ransom note for the cultural fashionista, beckoning them to buy back their morality via canvas or VR gallery.
Having cut his teeth in fashion photography, KASSEUS began to witness first-hand the fervent want for more in an extremely disposable industry constantly striving for the next big thing, the look, the luxury whilst housing a much darker underbelly.
Through live performance, video installation, augmented and virtual reality, he portrays this dichotomy of the luxuriant with the lugubrious. Glossy magazine style shots are layered with squalid wildstyle throw ups and picture perfect brands creating an almost comforting tension.
TLCX is the art of KASSEUS manifest. An invite only event where projection mapping techniques fuse with physical canvases and VDJ in a ribald aural assault. A synesthetic speakeasy where the 1% rub socially-distanced shoulders with woke fashion folk and Insta-bloggers alike, and closed auctions allow for unique opportunities to own one-off works and Instagram worthy moments alike.
Maybe we should have a write up of an experience of the event. Like it feels like you are from a magazine doing an article about your experience of the show. You can get creative with explaining your experience. Ie “we are in the exhibition space and without warning everything turns to black while ambient sounds ooze into the space. Projectors shoot rays of light through the mist masking around the pre existing art creating strange back-lighting effects, can’t tell whats real on the canvas and what’s projected etc, Kasseus enters the room while the dj eases in a menacing low techno beat. The first layer he starts gluing is a naked fashion model, the projector hilights the shape and position of each new layer, fortifying where the audience should focus next.
Here I think a close up photo of me making art with a write up about my technical approach to my process.
Drawing influence from the music industry, noise art, advertising, film, glossy magazines, the contemporary metropolis, street photography and art, high fashion, sociology and brand fascination, KASSEUS constructs layer upon layer of scintillating scuzz. Models are shot in digital, 30mm and medium format film and then recontextualised, rebrushed, wrecked and reworked into a chaotic collage of images, fusing classical and digital techniques to build lush, multifaceted canvases. Graffiti handstyles, inks and resins are then daubed to add a final patina of lasciviousness.
VIDEO collage of different photoshoots with models using digital and film cameras
As a fashion and editorial photographer, KASSEUS has worked with Olay, Clinique, Panten, Levis, net-a-porter, Lipsy and many fashion hauses. This harboured a disdain towards the airbrushed perfection, misleading standards and outright lies of the industry. It is this deconstruction of the form that sits at the heart of the experience – instead of faux lashes, there is a brand. Instead of surgically softened lips, there is script. Paper and print wrinkle and kink to show an imperfect humanity, divorcing the work from the technical perfection of his past for a more raw, spontaneous outcome. And this conflict sits at the heart of the KASSEUS aesthetic.
Animation video starting from a perfect fashion image then slowly seeing my art layers and the progression to rawness
Vila Komoda live show write up (by owners)
I’ve just asked them to do a write up, fingers crossed
Vila Komoda Video
The TLCX experience is booked to invade Milan, Madrid and London in the first half of 2021 (COVID-19 restrictions permitting), alongside VR gallery and augmented reality experiences already in production should restrictions continue into the New Normal. With a team of 20 strong working on all aspects from marketing to management and events, this is a post-modernist art experience like no other. Exclusivity and enforced scarcity merging with little windows into the sordid world of TLCX that everyone can experience via smartphone or computer.
Media pack