Casper Abolikiem, a 22 year old artist from Poland, seems to have always had deep roots in the art industry. His rise to fame started when he painted a portrait of ASAP Rocky, a famous rapper and hip-hop artist, and slowly followers on his Instagram ,and Tumblr started to increase. It’s no surprise why seeing as Abolikiem has a very different approach to his art, and his inspiration. He, like most artist, get their inspiration from the things around them such as nature—nothing out of the ordinary there, but then he goes on to speak about the nothingness that his models give him, I asked him to elaborate, and he said “When a model I’m painting is giving a cosmic blank stare like all the answers to every question are in the point of that stare this is the nothingness I attempt to work with”. He speaks in a way about his art that would make one think that he was simply an admirer looking from afar rather than the actual artist that painted the beautiful piece.

Now, it is no surprise that when finding out about his parents—a centric jazz fan of a dad who paints as well, who has an interesting furniture choice that inspires the young artist, and a mother who creates beautiful jewelry and clothing— may be why Abolikiem has such a conceptual way about himself. When he was younger he did not “agree” with his surroundings which led him to cover the carpet and walls in paint, and these moments of paint filled madness would follow him, and even though at first stubborn he soon, reluctantly, accepted that he was in fact an artist. We talked about his other gurus in the art world which he then goes on to talk about his guru Barnaby Rune, who in his opinion is the “excellence of the 80’s NYC abstract expressionist movement around Warhol and Basquiat.”.

Afterwards when the topic of social media came up, it seemed that he views it as another world that just websites that purely focus on social interactions. He talks about how his art viewed in the real world, and in the digital world. The two worlds are very different, but collide on the fact that we know little about each when it comes to his art. He manipulates us, in an intriguing way, because a painting that exist on Instagram and other social media could already be destroyed, and we would ever know. We would think these paintings exist, when really they are only memories that Abolikiem breaks down, and deconstructs in order to then make a painting that has none of the attributes or similarities of the last.

Culture, to him, is simply the world around us, the air that we breathe, and creates our very being. He thinks that the “strangeness” that comes with speaking two languages in his house and traveling around the world that would mostly come through in his art. We then talk about history, and he believes that we as humans go through “dimensional shifts” and in the extreme events such as global warming he wants to capture the moments in time, and manipulate it as well. He even wants to go so far to e surpass historical periods, icons and movements. In short, he wants to become a legend in the painting world, and he is well on his way to doing so. We talk about his future plans, and what he wants to do he goes on to say “I also am planning to isolate myself in Cost Rica for a few months now.” I asked him what the isolation does to stimulate his creative process, and he goes on to talk about meditation and how it caters to his work. Abolikiem hates his work with as much strength as he loves it, and this balance helps him to destroy old works, and create full new pieces from new ideas and thoughts. Will his paintings during his isolation be a success? The answer is yes, and I, and obviously the rest of the world, will be waiting to see them.