Digital Nostalgia is an interview series in three-parts, talking to artists whose works playfully use imagery found from the early days of the Internet. Their aesthetic not only draws from the pixelated symbols and graphics of the era, but also from the relics of pop-culture of those short-lived days of the 90s and early 2000s. These three artists celebrate our strange youth, one that now seems so uncomplicated —an age filled with mystery burnt CDs, AOL instant messenger, and Lisa Frank everything.

London-based artist Super Future Kid paints figures with twisted bodies and expressions living in a hyper-saturated, psychedelic world. Working also in sculpture, Super Future Kid is an expert at transforming spaces into worlds where her characters can feel right at home, complete with multi-colored floors and walls. Although her aesthetic is distinctively and unmistakably her own, one cannot help but think of cartoons from the 90s, or perhaps characters drawn from the Windows 95 program “Paint.” Originally from Berlin, her style is inspired by her sudden exposure to Western pop-culture after the reunification of Germany. Her vivid neon colors and wonderfully loud imagery offer an irresistible sensory overload, one that perhaps reflects back on her experience. Currently living in London, Super Future Kids discusses her inspirations and influences.

Let’s begin with your background. I understand you grew up in East Germany before the reunification. Can you tell us about this experience and how it influences your work?

Yes, it was an interesting part of my childhood. I had a great time both before and after the reunion, it was just very different. I can only tell from my experience as an 8-year-old, but growing up in the east meant that it was normal to reuse bottles and jars, you carried your groceries in ever-lasting shopping nets and it was normal to repair anything that broke rather than throw it out and buy a new one.

Visually, things were basic and a bit dull, houses were grey, package design was underwhelming and toys were rather classic. Instead of Ninja Turtles, He-Man, Barbie, Lego, and Matchbox we had totally unbranded stuff, just dolls, cars, building blocks, things like that, nothing weird, outlandish, or exciting. Witches and trolls were as strange as it got. They were still great though and I think because these toys weren't tied to any given narratives as they are today, they encouraged children to use their imagination to come up with their own stories.

Then when the wall finally came down, my parents immediately took the chance to get out of the 'country' the next day and explore West Germany for the first time. I still remember that day vividly: weird-looking architecture, novelty food, and an insane amount of toys, stuffed animals twice my size and so many colors! Soon after that, we didn't have to go to the west anymore, the west came to us, on television and in the shops. I loved it, I had my own video games, BMX bike, Barbies, Matchbox and lots of other crazy shit just a few months later, mind you. It was all second hand but I didn't care about that, it was exciting stuff. For some reason this feeling of excitement hasn't seized since then, I still love the weird and wonderful world of toy-realities, the striking colours, and visuals, so many different universes to dip in and out of. Why would you want to leave that behind?

Many of your works involved both two-dimensional and three-dimensional elements, such as your piece Spice Gurl, which features a painting resting on a burger and Pepsi that you constructed. Do you have a background in sculpture as well as painting?

Not really, no. Our program at art school was pretty broad and we got introduced to a lot of different techniques and methods, but there was no proper sculpting class or anything like that in my course. I've only started working in 3D a few years after graduating because I felt that something was missing in my work. To play around on a flat surface just wasn't fulfilling enough anymore. I do have a great interest in materials though, so I started experimenting with different ways to make sculptures, and I still am.

The planet of sculpting feels a bit like an endless overgrown jungle where you constantly get lost, sidetracked, and fall into traps, and you need to slash your way through it with a mental machete. But instead of feeling lost, I look at it as if I'm Indiana Jones or Lara Croft in Tomb Raider or something like that. It's an adventure and all that struggle is part of the game.

You’ve created some incredible installations! I especially love how you often transform the entire environment of a space when you exhibit your work, such as in your solo show Smells Like Teenage Armpit at Gallery Poulsen. Can you tell us about this exhibit? What has been an installation that you have really enjoyed?

Thank you! Even though I've always dreamed of it, doing installations is actually a fairly new thing for me, but I absolutely love it and hope to do more of that. I was excited when Gallery Poulsen offered me to transform their space and I took the chance right away. We flipped the walls from white to a very soothing black and purple. I also wanted to change the floor and the best option for that was foam mats because they come in lots of colors and are also very nice to walk on--they're so soft. To have some kind of haptic experience for the viewer, even if it's just for their feet, was important to me.

When I have an opportunity to transform a space, it's essential for me that people can relax, rest and forget about everything when they are in there, maybe even do some daydreaming. This is also what we did for my solo booth at Spring/Break Art Show in New York this year. Mindy (Mindy Solomon Gallery) had the idea of doing Spring/Break, I was thrilled when she suggested it! She had already connected with Ché Morales, a curator from New York who is well known for outdoing himself with every new project or show that he's taking on. This year's theme at the art show was 'IN EXCESS' and so the booth was built around overindulgence, in particular the Land of Cockaigne, a medieval myth imagined by peasants about a land where everything is edible and worries are replaced by pleasures.

Same as with Gallery Poulsen, I wanted the viewer to have a nice experience walking on the ground, so we filled the booth about two inches deep with over a ton of sparkling white salt and people loved it. Some even lay down doing 'snow angels'. Another part of the installation was a mushroom field that we translated into large plushy mushroom cushions for everyone to sit and lay on. They were constantly occupied and lots of people, couples, and children, as well as myself, were actually snoozing on the largest one, lol. The whole experience of planning and building the booth and especially to see the response of people was so rewarding and we all learned so much from the process. I'd do it again, any time!

If you had free range and opportunity to transform any environment to reflect your Technicolor dream world, where would you do it and how?

Uff, it's hard to single out a 'where' with so many possibilities. But for the 'how', I'd love to create some kind of playground and environment that is equally engaging, trippy, and relaxing, to invite people to have a good time in my real-life-dream-world. I'd want to create something that gives everyone a means to escape reality as they know it for a while and imagine themselves as versions in an alternate universe.

The characters in your paintings are so vivid, playful and fun! It’s as if you invented your own Emojis. How has digital culture influenced your aesthetic?

Ha, I think none of what I make would exist if it weren't for 'digital culture'. I had my own console (an old C64) when I was eight and it immediately drew me into the virtual world, so much that, for a moment, my life's goal as a first grader was to become a video game designer. Thinking back, it's kind of crazy how much those brutally raw pixel graphics of early games captured my imagination. I also really loved drawing on the computer with Microsoft’s “Paint” in the 90s, then I was collaging the heck out of images found on the Internet with Photoshop in the aughts, and when the iPad came out, I started drawing on that. For some reason I've never grown tired of making stuff on screens.

Nevertheless, the digital is always just a means to play with colors and shapes and trying out ideas. For my actual work, I have to be able to produce something tangible that is soft or rough and something that you can walk around or hold in your hands. I think of this duality as being like a mirror: one side is a rendered two-dimensional reality that exists on a glassy surface, while on the other side of it is something you can feel, that's warm, soft, and breathing. Both sides have their appeal but there is nothing more intriguing than the real thing.

Your work is filled with images of toys from 90s, like an Etch A Sketch and a My Little Pony doll. What do these objects mean to you? Do you think, in the future, things like Tik-Tok and Snapchat will be the next generation’s relics of nostalgia?

It's kind of weird to refer to those objects as relics or nostalgia. I mean, yes they definitely were around in the early 90s and probably even sooner than that, but they are still around today. The Ponies had a bit of an 'upgrade,' but in essence it's still My Little Pony. And yeah I loved those things when I was little, I even own a bunch of them still! Whenever I visit thrift stores I usually check out the toy shelves and often find something that I want to take home. Everyone's collecting something; I collect stupid little plastic toys, haha. Anyways, yes I really, really wanted to make that big ass Magna Doodle for my show at Gallery Poulsen and so I did ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . But I also wonder what nostalgia even means anymore, so much of my childhood (post-reunion) is still present, many of the same cartoons, games, even movies are still here. Everything gets repeated and reinvented over and over. Mostly I love that, but a small part of me is also yawning when Disney, Marvel, and the like throw up yet another remake.

Do you have anything coming up you’d like to tell us about?

This year is still very much filled with uncertainty, but I am currently working on my next solo show with Over The Influence in Hong Kong in October this year, for which I'm making a series of new paintings as well as sculptures. The work is revolving around leisure, recreation, and hanging out with a friend or pet, but with a sense of tension, because that's what my life is like at the moment. It is in essence very relaxed, every day presents itself with an opportunity to do as I wish, but yet we have been confronted with so many restrictions lately and the unknown times that lie ahead, 'will we be able to connect to our previous life?', 'how much will the world be changing around us?' etc.

So naturally, this feeling of tension finds its way into the new work and I'm trying to balance forces that simultaneously collide and repel one another, like something that is equally savage and silent, roaring and soft, gentle and rugged, these kind of feelings; but

I want to do it in a playful way, that does not rule out the prospect of victory, hope, and happy endings.

I have to ask—where does the name “Super Future Kid” come from?

I just chose a name for myself, I'm a professional child. Even when I'm 120 one day, I'll still be Super Future Kid.

Insta handles:

Super Future Kid - @superfuturekid

Gallery Poulsen - @gallerypoulsen

SPRING/BREAK Art Show - @springbreakartshow

Mindy Solomon Gallery - @mindysolomongallery

Ché Morales - @wanderlustflaneur

Over The Influence - @oti.official