paintings

Two Estonian artists – poet Elo Viiding and painter Santa Zukker – are trying to disrupt how people see art to make art exhibitions more engaging by combining paintings and poetry; their exhibition, “Vastukaja” (“Echo”), runs until 18 July at a piano bar in Tallinn.

“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen,” Leonardo da Vinci, an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance, reportedly said.

Berlin-based artist Lee Wagstaff creates abstract paintings with a secret. While at first glance you may be immersed in the myriad of complex patterns that blanket the canvas, take another step back and you'll discover a human face staring back at you. Each of his paintings features a portrait of an AI-generated face concealed within the repeating forms of the design. There is no magic to his process, however. It is simply a matter of subtly altering the pattern in places to convey the facial features of an individual. Typically, this requires Wagstaff to invert the colors or broaden the lines, which in turn creates the illusion of shadow and depth. The darker areas of the design help create the contours of eyes, eyebrows, a nose, lips, and the shape of the face, emerging from the print.