BIOGRAPHY

Ethan Platt is a Canadian artist known for his surrealist figurative paintings inspired by digital culture.  He has been exhibited across Canada and the United States with galleries such as Gallery 1888, Abbozzo Gallery, High Line Nine Galleries, Bau- Xi Gallery, Art Mur Gallery, Maison Depoivre Gallery, Visionary Art Collective, and Blitz Gallery.  He is currently Represented in Toronto by Gallery 1888.  Platt holds an Honours Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Drawing and Painting  (2019 - 2023) from OCAD University where he received several accolades such as the Richard Lemieux Scholarship, Hugh Mackenzie Memorial Scholarship, and the Donna MacLean Award for Portraiture.  Additionally, Ethan Platt has participated in media campaigns for Intel Canada, Vieunite UK, and has been featured on CP24 news, Blog TO, and Radio Canada Television. Platt currently works and lives in Toronto, Canada.

SATEMENT

Ethan Platt’s painting practice harmonizes the legacy of figurative painting with the visual languages and conditions of contemporary digital culture. His work investigates the increasingly fluid boundary between online and offline life, presenting surreal, otherworldly compositions that reflect the hybrid realities of the present moment.

Platt’s approach to colour and material is central to this inquiry. His palettes are deliberately selected for their capacity to evoke both natural and artificial environments. Working primarily in oil paint, he references historic painterly traditions while extending them through a materially informed dialogue with digital systems. Pigments such as cobalt, cadmium, and titanium are used not only for their chromatic properties but also for their conceptual resonance, functioning as a bridge between physical paint and the internal architecture of the computer. This connection is essential to Platt’s process, as each work originates in the digital realm.

Using 3D animation software, Platt sculpts, lights, and renders his compositions prior to painting. This preparatory stage allows for a level of control over form, perspective, surface, and illumination that exceeds physical constraints, enabling the depiction of improbable poses, materials, and spatial relationships. The resulting paintings translate digitally constructed spaces into tactile, materially rich objects.

Drawing inspiration from nature, entropy, historic figurative art, mineralogy, automotive design, industrialization, and online culture, Platt situates his practice within a wide visual and conceptual lineage. His work engages with movements including post-internet art, futurism, surrealism, impressionism, and the rococo, using these references to examine contemporary modes of seeing, representation, and realities.