Chapter II
Von Wolfe
Shadows of the Image
Interview by Anna Somova //
This second chapter enters the deeper strata of Von Wolfe’s praxis — a terrain where image production becomes a site of ontological inquiry and the painterly surface is conceived as a palimpsest of algorithmic memory, symbolic compression, and gestural control.
What unfolds is not a linear continuation, but a critical descent into the artist’s epistemology: his strategic integration of AI-generated form, his dismantling of canonical hierarchies, and his articulation of a visual language that merges the mechanics of digital repetition with the irreducibility of manual labor.
Von Wolfe navigates this interstice between the post-historic and the post-human with conceptual precision — composing images that are neither appropriated nor invented, but cultivated through systems of self-referencing recursion.
Photography by Nick Knight
ARTWORK 「Triton's Tirade」, Von Wolfe.
Digital diffusion model with crafted iterations in post-production.
Courtesy of the artist.
: Your paintings reference so many artworks and historical images, but I’m curious about influences outside the visual arts. Are there writers, filmmakers, or musicians who have shaped your imagination? For example, has literature (perhaps Borges, who loved labyrinths of meaning, or sci-fi authors who explore alternate histories) played a role in how you conceive your “alternate art histories”? Or has living through the turbulent events of the 2020s (pandemic, social movements, etc.) left a mark on the kind of stories you want to tell through your images?
Absolutely—my influences have always extended far beyond the visual arts. Literature, philosophy, cinema and music—all of these filter into my practice, often as conceptual scaffolding or tonal guides. Borges is a constant reference. His labyrinths, his mirror metaphors, his recursive narratives—these have deeply informed how I think about image-making as a kind of epistemological puzzle. I often imagine my work less as a statement and more as a riddle—something that unfolds, contradicts itself, and resists final meaning.
Science fiction too, especially the speculative and philosophical strain—writers like Philip K. Dick, Stanisław Lem, or J.G. Ballard—have had a profound impact. Their willingness to fracture time, to question the stability of reality, and to explore alternate histories resonates strongly with what I try to do visually. In a sense, my AI-based practice is its own form of sci-fi: an encounter with nonhuman cognition, an exploration of potential worlds conjured through machine dreaming. Music also plays a role—often ambient or minimalist compositions that mirror the meditative rhythm of my studio process. There’s something about music’s non-verbal logic, its temporal layering, that aligns with how I build images—slowly, iteratively, across different sensory and conceptual frequencies.
In that way, the stories I’m telling have also changed. They’re less about rewriting history in bold strokes and more about feeling through its echoes—tracing the residuals of culture, identity, and time through a lens that’s both deeply human and increasingly posthuman.
: Can you describe your studio process when developing a new piece? Do you start with research – paging through art history books or scrolling through digital archives for visual “ingredients”? Or do you start with sketches of an idea (say, “Mona Lisa meets Godzilla” – I’m being facetious) and then hunt for reference images to fit? I’m trying to picture the playfulness versus the planning.
My process starts with open-source AI software installed on an RTX 4090. I train image-generation models on a dataset composed entirely of my own past work. This gives the system a specific visual vocabulary—one that’s deeply personal, yet capable of producing unexpected permutations. Once trained, the model generates hundreds of images. I comb through these outputs systematically, looking for what I call an “outlier”—an image that doesn’t just reflect my past language, but expands it. It’s not about finding the most refined result, but the one that reveals a new direction. Something that feels unfamiliar, but still resonates at a deeper level.
When an outlier stands out, that’s the point where the digital phase ends and the physical begins. I translate the selected image into a traditional oil painting using classical techniques—gridding, layered underpainting, glazing. This part of the process is precise and rooted in centuries-old craftsmanship. The work always exists between two poles: computation and intuition, speed and slowness, the virtual and the material. Each painting is the result of both high-frequency image testing and a focused, hands-on execution. The aim is not to collapse these two worlds, but to hold them in tension—to let each stage inform the other without compromise.
As for legacy, I’d like the work to be seen as a bridge—between eras, between mediums, between human and machine.
If there's a contribution, perhaps it's in rethinking authorship and image-making in the context of a rapidly transforming visual culture.
: In a recent interview, you spoke about your fascination with the German Romantic era and how its philosophy of the sublime and introspection resonates today. I’d love to hear more about this. Do you consider yourself a Romantic at heart, despite the postmodern strategy of your work?
I often feel aligned with the ethos of Romanticism. German Romantic thinkers and painters, particularly Friedrich, Runge, and the writings of Goethe, approached art as a means of accessing something beyond language. Their work was about more than visual beauty; it was about a metaphysical orientation, a striving toward the sublime, even in the face of ruin or fragmentation.
That sense of searching—of wrestling with the ineffable—is very present in my practice. Beneath the systems and software, there’s an emotional undercurrent that runs through everything I do. Works like Christ on the Cross or Azazel are not ironic. They are acts of engagement with enduring themes: suffering, transcendence, exile, faith. The fact that they’re constructed through postmodern tools—digital layering, symbolic overload—doesn’t diminish their sincerity. If anything, it heightens the tension. The viewer is pulled between emotional depth and aesthetic detachment, and that dissonance becomes the experience.
I’m not interested in nostalgia, but I am interested in what Romanticism still offers—particularly its emphasis on introspection, the individual encounter with the infinite, and the fragility of human reason. Those ideas feel more relevant than ever in an age of digital saturation and algorithmic mediation. So while my work often wears the language of postmodernism, the impulse behind it is older, more earnest. I’m not trying to dismantle meaning for its own sake. I’m trying to reach for it, knowing that it may always remain just out of view.
: Your oeuvre often feels like a mirror maze reflecting our contemporary culture as much as our past. When you incorporate something explicitly modern – say, Damien Hirst’s spot paintings or a scene of environmental catastrophe – are you aiming to critique the present? For example, placing 9/11 imagery in a surreal context or using Air-Ink made from pollution in a drawing are potent gestures. Do you see your art as a commentary on today’s society and its relationship to images (perhaps our saturation with images, or our tendency to idolize certain pictures)?
I don’t see myself as a commentator in the traditional sense, but it’s impossible to make images today without being in dialogue with the culture that surrounds us. When I use contemporary materials or references—whether it’s Hirst’s spot paintings, 9/11 imagery, or something like Air-Ink derived from pollution—it’s not to make a singular point. It’s to create a pressure within the image. A kind of atmospheric tension between recognition and discomfort.
Contemporary material is part of the visual world we all inhabit, so of course it enters the work. But I’m not aiming to deliver a moral verdict. My interest lies more in examining how images function—how they accumulate meaning, how they decay, how they can be both sacred and disposable. We live in a culture saturated with images, many of them stripped of context but loaded with emotional residue. I’m trying to hold that contradiction in place, not resolve it. So while there’s a critical dimension to the work, it’s never straightforward. The ambiguity is deliberate. If there’s a message, it’s not delivered like a slogan—it emerges in the viewer’s negotiation with the image. The work doesn’t tell you what to think. It reflects back the structures—emotional, cultural, visual—that shape how we see in the first place.
ARTWORK 「Sea Horse 」, Von Wolfe.
Oil on Canvas.
Courtesy of the artist.
: I imagine viewers must often share interpretations with you that you never intended – given the open-ended nature of your work. Could you share an instance when a viewer, critic, or even a collector pointed out a meaning or reference in one of your works that truly surprised you? How do you feel about the audience “completing” the work by bringing their own knowledge and imagination to it?
Interpretation has always been a part of the process. Once a work leaves the studio, it enters a space of shared authorship. I don’t try to control that—on the contrary, I welcome it. There have been moments when a viewer or collector has identified something I hadn’t consciously placed, and those moments are often the most rewarding. One person once described a painting of mine, Always Screaming When Her Voice Is Cracked—originally conceived as a reinterpretation of Mary Magdalene—as an image of resistance, reading it through the lens of Iranian women’s protests. That reading had nothing to do with the original concept, but it was deeply moving. It told me something about the elasticity of the image, and about how resonance is shaped by the viewer’s context, not just the artist’s.
: How do you see your work evolving in the next decade? Are there uncharted territories you’re excited to explore – perhaps new technologies (VR? AR?), or entirely new subject matter that you’ve held off on so far?
After integrating AI into my process in 2021, the work is no longer rooted in appropriation in the same way it once was. I’ve already begun moving toward entirely original compositions—works that don’t directly quote historical sources, even if they carry echoes of them. In terms of what’s next, I’m interested in immersive technologies—VR, AR, and spatial computing—but only if they can be approached with the same painterly integrity that underpins my work on canvas. These tools offer new dimensions, but they have to serve the same depth of inquiry. I’m not looking for novelty; I’m looking for ways to deepen the questions.
I’ve also started to think more about abstraction—not as a departure from figuration, but as a stripping back of language. What happens when the residue of history is still there, but the reference points dissolve? That’s something I’d like to explore: how to create images that feel like memory, myth, or dream, but are no longer tethered to any specific source.
: When future art historians look back at “the world of Von Wolfe,” what do you hope will be the philosophical or artistic contribution that your art has made to the story of art?
As for legacy, I’d like the work to be seen as a bridge—between eras, between mediums, between human and machine. If there's a contribution, perhaps it's in rethinking authorship and image-making in the context of a rapidly transforming visual culture. I’m less interested in offering a fixed “style” than in proposing a method—one that’s rooted in deep craft, critical inquiry, and a willingness to let the image evolve beyond intention.
ARTWORK 「Always Screaming When Her Voice Is Cracked 」, Von Wolfe.
Digital diffusion model with crafted iterations in post-production.
Courtesy of the artist.
Some works invite this more than others. Pieces like Always Screaming When Her Voice Is Cracked have generated wildly divergent interpretations—some see it as a feminist scream, others as a portrait of existential despair, others still as an AI hallucination. I don’t try to resolve those differences. If anything, they confirm that the work is alive. It’s doing what I hope it will do: refusing to settle into a single narrative, offering multiple entry points depending on who is looking, and when.
I’ve come to see this kind of reception as not only inevitable, but essential. The audience completes the work, not by solving it, but by inhabiting it. The painting becomes a mirror of their knowledge, their projections, their emotional temperature at the time. That kind of multiplicity expands the intent behind the piece.
ARTWORK 「Ladybird 」, Von Wolfe.
Digital diffusion model with crafted iterations in post-production.
Courtesy of the artist.
: Lastly, I’d love to end with a story. Could you choose one recent artwork of yours that is particularly meaningful to you and share its backstory? It could be the wild journey of how you made it, a personal challenge you overcame during its creation, or perhaps an unexpected influence that guided it.
When I painted The Journey’s End, after Géricault and Caspar David Friedrich, I worked in a Roman studio, high atop a tall scaffold. Outside, a summer storm swept through the city—rain lashed the windows and flooded the streets, the drama of it all echoing the tempest I was trying to summon on canvas. I had wandered Rome in search of the very studio where Géricault once painted his Barberi horses, though it has long since vanished. I descended into the crypt of a deconsecrated church I believed he may have used, hoping to find some trace of that great, lost, rolled-up canvas—there was none.
At that time, Rome felt like a palimpsest of reenactments. I was reading Tom McCarthy’s Remainder, reflecting on the possibilities of resurrecting not just the atmosphere of Géricault but also the spectral presence of the Nazarenes—those 19th-century idealists who sought a return to purity through art. It was a period of obsessive reconstruction, both physical and emotional, as I tried to inhabit their vanished world through my own.
ARTWORK 「Cathedral 」, Von Wolfe.
Oil on Canvas.
Courtesy of the artist.
FIN
