When contemporary society thinks of digital media, we envision seamless glass screens, infinite virtualization, and the complete eradication of physical friction. Yet, Chicago-based visual artist and software engineer Zenon Evans operates in the exact opposite direction. He forces the digital to account for its physical footprint.
In his multi-faceted artistic practice—spanning oil, acrylic, mixed-media reliefs, kinetic assemblage sculptures, and software-driven installations—Evans investigates the tactile realities hidden behind our screens. Rather than treating computers as mere tools for final output, he interrogates the very anatomy of computer graphics, digital error, and data transmission.
The foundational heartbeat of Evans's work rests on a profound fascination with resolution, lossiness, and the structural grid. Much like pointillism deconstructed light into dots of paint, Evans bridges the digital and physical by treating pixels not as abstract screen coordinates, but as tangible building blocks.
In series like his "Physical Pixels" and "Isometric" works, he explores what happens when digital phenomena—such as screen glitches, compression artifacts, and subpixel layouts—are laboriously translated into physical materials like oil and acrylic. Through custom-built computer graphics scripts written in Python, he simulates analog CRT monitor RGB subpixel displays and scanline effects, translating those electronic ghosts back into hand-crafted textures.
What commands attention in Evans’s portfolio is this rare fluency across two entirely different worlds: the rigorous logic of backend software engineering and the chaotic beauty of physical art-making. Whether he is building data integration pipelines with Dagster and Python or engineering kinetic sculptures with microcontrollers and servo motors, his technical expertise directly informs his aesthetic.
He doesn't just paint about technology; he builds the machinery that conceptualizes it. His kinetic assemblage sculptures introduce actual mechanical movement and hardware automation into gallery spaces, merging the cold precision of robotics with the idiosyncratic warmth of handmade relief sculpture.
Evans’s work ultimately transcends mere technical novelty. By exploring themes like screen degradation and the physical manifestations of digital data, he creates a visual language for our modern anxiety-inducing relationship with screens. His art acts as a mirror to a culture that lives inside digital matrices, reminding us that every virtual interaction leaves a physical trace, a shadow, or a glitch.
By slowing down the rapid-fire pace of modern media and rendering it into stroke, mass, and kinetic motion, Evans invites us to inhabit the hidden spaces between the digital and the real. It is a contemplative, cross-disciplinary practice—proving that even in an era of pure abstraction, the physical world always strikes back.
See his work at The Stalls By Primitive x Design 329 - also at