Get Lost In The Impossible Worlds Of Alex McLeod's Digital Landscapes

Outworld

If you're unfamiliar with artist Alex McLeod's work, he creates candy-colored landscapes that look real but are purely digital creations brought to life with After Effects and other digital tools. The works are intricately-realised fantastical imaginings and McLeod has a new collection of these virtual wonderlands in an upcoming exhibition, called Outworld at the Angell Gallery in Toronto on April 27 to June 1.

They exhibition includes 3D printed sculptures, like a black pine sculpture consisting of 40 pieces, and digital prints. "I wanted to depart a bit from the work I was known for, but for it to still look familiar." McLeod tells me. "I thought I could achieve this if I produced most of the work monochromatic, and included a couple rainbow pieces, rather than working within seasonal palettes."

McLeod has previously cited video games—role playing and adventure genres in particular—as inspiration, but his works have a clarity which makes them look more real than the sometimes pixelated environments of gaming. "I am still trying to explore synthesizing photographic techiniques" he notes, "but allowing parts of the work to look 'digital'. I believe its that tension between real and fake [that] is what has always carried the work, so I would like to push it a bit."

As well as the exhibition, the pieces will also be animated and included in an upcoming public art project in Denver called Denver Digerati.

You can check out the prints from the exhibition, below.

Rainbow Island

Gold Plains

Cloud City

Sandy Space Beach

Cloud City Close

Red City

Rainbow Mountain

Cloud Birth Black

Blue Lake

@stewart23rd