British artist Jonathan Yeo is still most widely recognized for his portrait of newly crowned King Charles III, but the self-taught painter has been exploring technology for more than a decade. That experimentation came to a head last October with a three-day presentation of Yeo’s paintings at the Centre Pompidou, created in partnership with Snap, which used augmented reality (A.R.) to animate his portraits.
The exhibition, “Spectacular: The Art of Jonathan Yeo in Augmented Reality,” is now set to make its U.S. debut this Sunday at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas.
Yeo has spent three decades painting well-known figures, and in a video call he described portraiture as his “day job.” He said the format’s static quality has long been a source of frustration for him.
“I tend to spend half my time doing the portraits, and half the year experimenting,” Yeo said. His earlier attempts at pushing his practice in new directions included collages and themed series.
