dialogue
Stevie Chow | Artist
July 2025
6 min read
Stevie Chow's artistic exploration seamlessly intertwines digital and manual techniques, from inkjet transfers to painting, reflecting a deep-seated curiosity about the unconscious frameworks influencing cultural norms and belief systems. His journey into this technical intersection was driven by a quest to uncover and challenge these hidden rules. Over the years, Stevie has honed a process that captures the tension between these frameworks and lived experiences, particularly influenced by the profound societal shift towards hyper-connectivity through digital media.
For Stevie, the advent of smartphones marked a significant divide in societal behavior and communication, prompting him to explore new visual languages that resonate with this digital age. While rooted in the expressive power of gestural painting, he found himself compelled to integrate digital images into his practice, blurring the traditional boundaries between mediums. His work thus evolves as a dialogue between digital immediacy and the tactile richness of painting, reflecting on how these technologies reshape our perceptions and interactions with art.
Photography courtesy of Stevie Chow.
Your work merges digital and manual processes, from inkjet transfers to painting. What first led you to explore this intersection?
“I generally find myself interested in uncovering the unconscious frameworks or “rules” that are at play in regards to cultural norms, belief systems, and how they may be affecting my perceptions of myself and the world. Although I can’t say for sure what led me to this technical intersection, I would guess it was initially prompted by that curiosity.
With this in mind, I’ve spent the past few years developing a process that could reflect the tension that emerges when those unconscious or imposed frameworks come into conflict with our lived experiences. Personally, the most noticeable external influence has been the shift toward a hyper-connected culture, with constant access to news, information, and entertainment. I think I was 18 or 19 when the smartphone became the standard way to communicate, and it felt like a clear “before” and “after” in how we conduct ourselves, both individually and socially. I’ve always loved what can be expressed through gestural painting, but I struggled to find a visual language within it that could speak to this shift in a way I could relate to.
At the same time, most traditional art forms are now encountered more often through digital screens than in person, and the hierarchies between mediums feel far less distinct.
This is a bit long-winded, but ultimately it’s the combination of all this that led to developing a way to engage with digital images while still exploring the layering and emergent qualities of painting.”
Stevie Chow, Cache from the Freeway, Inkjet transfer, acrylic & primer on canvas, 76 x 112 cm, 2025.
When you're building a body of work, what tends to guide your decisions?
“While my broader practice is guided by the relationship between machine precision and gestural response, I tend to approach each body of work as a way to inquire into something more present or personally relevant. At the moment, I’m working on two branches of the same body of work. Both come from a curiosity and concern around how technology is influencing the way we recollect memories, and in turn, how that might be affecting our perception and experience of reality.”
Stevie Chow, Maximum Charly, Inkjet transfer & oil stick on birch panel, 40 x 50 cm, 2024.
Your work often draws from personal digital archives. What draws you to certain memories, and how do you decide which ones become part of your work?
“When I’m going through images, I’m usually searching for a feeling of seeing through my own eyes in that moment. Whether or not I actually remember it isn’t really important, as long as the image offers an opportunity to notice something. There’s a kind of magic in those “in between” mundane moments, and I love the search for fragmented gems that hold something worth returning to.
The decision of what becomes part of the work is more intuitive. Often, each step only reveals itself after the previous one has been taken. Occasionally two separate images will pull themselves into the same composition, but more often I find that layering and painted interjections within the building of a single image offers enough.
Stevie Chow, Suspended Disclosure, Cyanotype, inkjet transfer & acrylic on canvas, 122 x 60 cm, 2024.
In light of your recent group shows at Lee Scully and Arts Archive London, how did it feel to see your work in dialogue with other artists?
I like the idea that a work is born in the studio but only really starts to live once it leaves. It becomes its own object, and what it communicates is no longer something I control. Seeing this body of work start to engage with other artists has been helpful in showing me where I might want to go next or how I could push the compositions into new territory.
In both cases, hats off to the curators. They brought together some interesting and unexpected works that made space for good conversations and new connections.”
Stevie Chow, Cartpusher, Cyanotype, inkjet transfer & acrylic on canvas, 40 x 50 cm, 2025.
Now that you've just completed your MA at the RCA, what are you most excited to continue exploring in your work moving forward?
“The MA gave me the space to work through a whole period of experimentation I needed in order to develop the sincerity I sought to achieve within a fairly technical process. Now that much of that has landed, I'm excited to keep building out the work and see where it wants to go.“
Recommended
